Another good thought Tony. I was at ISO400 and 1/60. But looking at the shots the only lighting was from the flash, so I was probably in Aperture priority and the shutter sync'ed at 1/60 but in fact there was less light then that. Tonight I bumped it up to 500 and the noise is getting bad with my D70.

your right, the noise does start to get "bad" but exposure is the key when it comes to higher iso's. I've taken some very usable images with the d70 and iso 600. If your off by much on the exposure, you will see more noise. also, you may try turing on the long exposure. Did you try RAW and under exposing a few and then adding a little exposure in Capture?

I agree Tony, and I typically follow the “Expose to the right” philosophy for all shooting. But in this case, I have two problems, I am limited to f4 and I need about 1/3 stop more:) And on top of that a lot of the frame is dark even when correctly exposed. How do they say the “devil is in the shadows”:) I also always shoot RAW. The first series of shots was done with the 300f4 and a 1.4TC so I was at 5.6 and they were all about a stop underexposed. That, even push processed in the RAW editor still looked crapy.