I used to have a little compact Pentax digital camera that took really great photos at night. I remember taking off from an airport and going by this thunderhead at night and got a great photo of it being illuminated by some lightning. My Nikon D60 doesn't come close. Even with ISO at Hi-5 and fstop all the way open at 3.5 I would say it takes at least a 10 second exposure to come close to what the Pentax did in a second. Unfortunately I can't compare side by side because I got the D60 after the Pentax was stolen from my house.

I remember seeing a documentary about how much better CCD's were at absorbing light than film. So I was not surprised at how well the Pentax did. But I was disapointed with the D60. Are digital SLRs programmed in some "cripiling" way to emulate film cameras? In other words, they emulate the behavior of a film camera such that a 10 second exposure with my D60 is similar to what you'd get on a film camera?

This kind of also relates to the fact that both film and digital pictures are grainy on long exposures. This seems really odd to me and again it makes me think the digital camera is designed to emulate this anomaly that you see in film.