Is this noise?

Hello,

I consider myself somewhat of a freshman when it come to the art of Photography but I am fluent with the mechanize of DSLRs. One question remains uncertain to me is the question of noise. I've read that a great many people are very concern about noise but others are not as concerned. I have a Nikon D7K, and couple of D90s. I took a sample picture using the settings below.

I took the picture in RAW and converted to JPEG, and extracted only the background to create the picture below.

There are obvious ugly dots in this background. Is that noise I am looking at? If so, should I conclude that with this setting, I shouldn't push ISO 2000?

If the picture for the background is not clear, please try:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-...Ahr0/qQJR9fLenEI/s912/DSC_5842_background.jpg

I'm no expert but yes that is noise. But you might be able to lower the noise seen there a lot in post processing.

When you shoot ISO 2000 you should expect some noise.

Welcome to the forum,there are a lot of knowledgeable people on here to advice you about noise removal/reduction,ime rubbish at it but this is my take.

Yes, this is noise, as expected at ISO 2000. Keep ISO as low as possible to reduce noise. You can also remove some noise in post processing.

Thank you, everyone.