Just thought to put in a word about noise: in general, whenever you're dealing with compact or prosumer cameras, it's unlikely that you'll be using a high ISO and trying to shoot handheld (which can be easily done with DSLRs with little image destruction by noise), but will shoot from a sturdy tripod or some other stable surface. And when that happens, there's no camera shake to worry about. In such cases a longer exposure might yield some surreal blur effects as well, so it's a plus.
For night photography, it might be good to shoot at the lowest ISO possible, and stop down to around f/8 for more depth of field and overall sharpness. Beyond that the images produced might actually be of a lower quality, because even though DOF is increased, diffraction within the lens will result in a softer picture.
If I am not mistaken, Fuji is going to be selling the F30 soon, which handles noise quite well even at ISO 1600, just like it's predecessors, the F10 and F11. In addition to that I suspect it also has a real manual mode.
