What with the endless "noise" about high-ISO noise, I can only conclude that due to my 40 years of shooting film, my personal expectations of a high-ISO digital image are far too low. Call me a doddering old fool but I will gladly take detail plus noise over squeaky clean noiseless smear.
I believe it's camera makers like Canon and Nikon, plus the absurd list of accepted cameras that Getty Images uses to establish a minimum image quality standard that have duped the photographic community into believing that the only good image is a noiseless one.
I've posted these K-7 ISO 3200 images before and I don't consider these to be a last ditch alternative to no image at all: