New life for my old Sony A900 via C1?

I first tried C1 when they introduced their program for Sony.  Looked at it, but didn't use it much.  Then, purchased the Sony only version perpetual license.  Worked with it, went through the tutorials, liked it, but, again, did not really use it that much (I spend most of my time in Linux and am quite fond of darktable).

During this holiday season, because my granddaughter has this aversion to flash (even when bounced backwards) and closes her eyes during every capture, I decided to shoot totally with available light, even though in many situations, I was forced to up the ISO to my A900's max of 6400.  I've yet to try any body that didn't produce significant noise when pushed to its max ISO, and the A900 was particularly vilified in the press reviews and comments by users of competing systems.  I never found its noise above 1600 ISO to be nearly as objectionable as portrayed in those comments, but, there was no denying its presence, and I have no personal experience with other systems.

However, this year, because I had eschewed use of my flash to accommodate my granddaughter's annoying habit of purposely closing here eyes whenever I had my flash attached (whether on or off), and because, IMO, darktable's noise reduction is less than optimal, I went looking for another solution, and, naturally, turned to C1 since I already had it installed.  I bit on the upgrade offer to C1_21, although I may have resisted if I had read the comments concerning that upgrade posted here on this forum.

An already too long story made shorter, I have been blown away with the way C1 handles my high ISO images. All my images, no matter what ISO, are perfectly acceptable, and I can zoom in on dark areas of high ISO images and actually observe the affect the noise reduction sliders have on noise in those images.

I feel as though C1 has given my old DSLR a new lease on life, as I can shoot at those high ISO settings and not resign myself to noisy, useless results.

I am curious if other A900 users have experienced similar results, or am I deceiving myself (my eyes do not deceive me, of that I am certain).

I am a very happy camper.

John Calloway

PS: I posted on this forum when first using C1_21 (12/26/2020), but I have failed to see that post appear.  I wonder why.