In my day-to-day usual workflow, I’m pretty much back to using RawTherapee, which gives me much more control than Corels’ AfterShot Pro. I still use that from time to time tho, and had some nice results from a model shoot from last June (I think that at least the model would prefer those newer conversions to others which she had already, and/or made on her own).
Today I played around with some raw files from other cameras, like this:

Needle Tower, Seattle - ©2010 Lars Rehm, DPReview
This is a night shot for the DPReview test of the Nikon D7000 camera, and this image was taken at a whopping ISO of 25,600. With a time of 1/80th of a second, that means that such images are – theroretically – hand-holdable. I “developed” the raw .NEF file you can download from their site using RawTherapee, and tho of course the full size image has some bad noise, resized (with The Gimp) for the web like here, it still makes a pretty decent image. Not that I would shoot like this – for a photo like that I would always prefer to use a tripod and base ISO to get the best and sharpest result possible. But camera testers have to do things like these, because people (like me) want to see those results…
The second image is from the same site, test of the Nikon D5100:

Glass of ale, ©2011 Barney Britton and DPReview
This ISO 12,800 shot taken with the Nikon D5100 was underexposed over 1.3 stops, so at this ISO setting, “pushing” the image back to a normal output increases the noise that much that even here – at this relatively small size – you can see it. It is nonetheless more than remarkable what you can do with a modern camera (both those Nikon cameras share the same superb Sony APS-C size 16MP sensor), and yes, taking shots in pubs in the evening is where you actually need good results at high sensitivities. Better get a noisy shot at ISO 3200, which you can still convert to black & white, than a blurry and noisy one at ISO 800 with a camera like mine, or no photo at all. Makes sense.
Here’s one which I took myself this morning:

I had my E-520 on auto ISO, capped at 400, so this is ISO 400. But this shot was also underexposed more than 1 stop – I forgot that my object was almost white, and that I should compensate for this. As you can see, I can use my older Olympus camera with its 10MP Panasonic sensor up to ISO 400, and still push it one stop. Full size image for pixel-peeping on Flickr, as usual.
But those who know me know also that mostly I’m using my camera at base ISO (which is ISO 100 in most cameras), no matter if I take portraits using flash or even night shots like the one above. Here’s an example, also from this afternoon, when Zuleikha was playing “Ubongo” with Mitchie:

I used my studio flash at approximately 30% of its power, and pointed it to a white wall at camera right. The camera was at f/5.6, 1/160th of a second, and ISO 100. For this, any digital camera of recent age is more than good enough. But if you want more (like more dynamic range for instance), then the cameras mentioned above are good ones (and compared to a D700 or even a D3S, they’re even halfway affordable)
Let’s see what Olympus will bring next – they made appointments for a press conference on Feb 8th. An early ad on the back cover of the British Amateur Photographer read: “Oh My Goodness!”, and since then they even filed the rights for a product called “OM-D” – even here in Germany. Interested in that? Then go on and read 4/3 Rumors…
Thanks for reading and viewing (and even commenting?)