the thing to remember when pushing the ISO up there, besides using in camera NR on JPGs, is to overexpose your image, an underexposed or even properly exposed image has more noise than one that your highlights are blinking, and your histogram is mildly clipped to the right (not a ton) ... but remember to keep the detail in the white dogs ... I change my shutter speed from my average for the show, down one for all black dogs and up two (from the average) for the all white dogs ... as those who shoot agility, you understand the challenges we must endure just to get a picture while shooting in a dark dungeon LOL

Jim .. the fps are enough, honestly, I've never noticed a slowdown, or felt I needed more, it writes soo fast on the extreme III cards I use, that I litterally could hold the hammer down & machine gun it if I wanted to.

what I love about the 50D is many bought it & couldn't figure out how to use it well, so it's resale value is low, meaning we can collect them at a reasonable price LOL