Nikon D80 images:
front with lens,
3/4l,
3/4r,
top,
front w/out lens and
menu
Sample images: Focus Priority,
Friends,
Great Colours,
Pass the Hat and
Yellow Car
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Details at a glance
Megapixels: 10.2
Lens Mount: Nikon F
FPS:3
LCD: 2.5 inches
Storage: SD/SDHC
Size: 132 x 103 x 77mm
Weight: 585g
We clicked with
Intelligent flash, 10MP, good range of ISO, good value for money, good battery life
Shots in the dark
Slight overexposure in high contrast situations, not able to change settings when reviewing until shutter pressed
Links
See our product page
More Nikon information
www.nikon.co.uk
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What it's Like To Use
The Nikon D80 handles well with all the buttons and wheels falling into place in your hands. I mainly take portrait photographs and it works fine in the studio. I've got no complaints whatsoever. The battery lasts for ages and hasn't let me down at all. I was a bit nervous as I'd borrowed a D70 for a few weeks and the battery readout went from full to empty fairly quickly (if I remember correctly after around 300 photos) and once it was on the last 25% it ran out all of a sudden. I haven't had this with the D80. The readout looks pretty accurate and I think I get around 1000 shots from a charge including uploading to the pc with it plugged in via USB. I also view and review my shots all the time so the LCD is on a lot.
One Size Fits All
The first thing I noticed about the Nikon D80 was the size. It fits nicely into my hands and all the buttons and wheels are easily accessible. It has a lovely balanced feel to it and although it's heavier than my other cameras it's not so heavy that it gives you neck ache. I bought mine body only as I'd bought a lens second hand but it's the same lens as comes in the kit and that's the Nikkor 18 to 70mm lens.
Wear a Mac
For all you flashers out there! The D80's flash sync is 1/200s down from 1/250 on the D70 and 1/500 on the D200. It has built-in, i-TTL and also works for wireless control of external flashes like the optional SB600 or SB800 speedlight. This will enable you to place your speedlight away from the camera with no long trailing leads and to take advantage of the Nikon Creative Lighting System.
I love the flash indoors. It's an 'intelligent flash' which senses how far you are from a subject and adjusts automatically in response to lighting conditions. I've tried really hard to get it to 'blow out' faces when using the onboard flash and had no luck at all(!) See the example (Friends) above.
The Matrix
Nikon uses a 3D Colour Matrix (Metering II). 3D Colour Matrix Metering II automatic exposure control ensures ideal exposures in most lighting conditions. It evaluates brightness, colour, contrast, selected focus area and camera-to-subject distance.
In high contrast scenes I have found that the D80 is biased slightly to preserving the shadows at the expense of highlights. If this doesn't suit your style of photography, turn on the highlight feature in the reviewing mode and dial in -.3 or -.7 EV.
Evil Eye
With the Nikon D80 you don't seem to need to worry about red eye. At least I haven't! In the example (Friends) above you would have been at high risk of giving your friends red eyes from hell but I've yet to experience it in my photos. There is however, a Red Eye correction feature available by pressing ok when viewing photographs if you should need it.
A Pain in the Button
The only thing that really bugs me is that when you have a taken a photo and it's displayed on the LCD, until you press the shutter half way, you can't change any settings. For a while I couldn't work out what was going on. I'd take the photo, have a quick glance on the back and go to change say, Speed or Aperture using the command dial and nothing would happen (except to scroll through the photos). I've got used to it now but it took a while.
Colour Me Pretty
This camera is great at getting the colours right. See Great Colours above - Gorgeous.
That's My View
The Nikon D80's LCD is an enormous 2.5 inches and has a nifty plastic cover which is great if like me you tend to scratch them! It clips off so you can fit another. The screen has 230,000 dpi and has a lovely wide angle of 170 degrees. You can view it outside. I've had no problems in bright weather. Scrolling through the photographs can be done in two ways, either with the multi selector on the back or the main command dial at the back near the top. The multi selector also allows you to view histogram (3 colours and white), highlights, two pages of EXIF information and the simple view.
Who Needs Photoshop (or PaintShopPro)
The Nikon D80 has some funky features that you can access while viewing your photos in the LCD by clicking on OK. They are; D Lighting (bringing out shadows), Red Eye Correction (I doubt if you'll use it as I said earlier), Trim (Does what it says on the tin), Monochrome (Black and White, Sepia and Cyanatope), Filter Effects (Sky light, Warm Filter, Colour Balance) and Small Picture (to make them suitable for emailing. If you don't have a computer then these features could be pretty nifty but I like more flexibility so would prefer to use my software.
A La Carte
That's the D80's menu. It's pretty easy to navigate around and very easy to see in the big LCD. You can also customize them to make sense to you, deciding what gets displayed and what doesn't.
I Can See Clearly Now
The autofocus system in the D80 is great. It has 11 zones of focus which are available in auto, portrait, sports, night, and night portrait. You point at something, press the button half way down and it locks onto your subject. You see it in the viewfinder as red boxes. You can of course select spot and centre focus. The D80 uses Focus Priority when you use the program modes. This means it won't shoot unless it's in focus. So if it's locked on to your subject you can click away confident that it's getting your car/bird/kid in focus. I love it for that, although it will hang until it gets the focus but I much prefer a few shots in focus to lots out of focus. See this photograph (Focus Priority) - the camera locked on the bird and I took the photo. Simple and in focus! Not the best framed photo and it was getting dark but much better than I'm used to with my other camera.
You've Been Framed
The Nikon has a frame rate of 3 per second. I used it at a Production Car Trial taking photos of the cars as they went up the tests and it coped admirably although to be honest the cars don't go very fast, usually only staying in first gear. (See Yellow Car) Its buffer seems more than adequate to me at 100 shots (never tried it out anywhere near this though).
ISO Like This Camera
The ISO range is from 100 - 3200. When you look in the menu you only see from Auto, 100 - 1600. The other ranges are shown as Hi + 0.3, Hi + 0.7 and Hi +1 which is 3200.
Balancing on a Tight Rope
The available white balance settings are Auto, Incandescent, Tungsten, Cloudy, Fluorescent, Flash, Shade, Sunlight, K (Kelvin, choose the colour temperature) and White Balance Preset (where you can take the white balance from a photograph or using a neutral white or grey card).
Setting the Scene
The D80 has 6 scene modes. Portrait, Landscape, Macro, Sports, Night Scene and Night Portrait. I've had a play with most of these settings but to be honest I prefer to use my own settings but if you are new to SLRs and want to find out what settings to use in certain situations then you can try them out. Most of the modes are pretty self explanatory. If you are taking a portrait then consider portrait mode! As well as selecting an appropriate aperture and shutter speed this will also set the camera to produce natural skin tones and a flattering slightly softer image. I was interested to see what the Night Portrait did so I took a few shots using either the normal portrait mode and the night portrait mode. It did pretty much what it said it would which is to expose the background more. It would be great for party shots this Christmas. (See Pass the Hat).
It's all in the Quality
The D80 has lots of quality settings including JPEG fine, normal and basic. Raw (which is a NEF file from Nikon) is available on its own but you can also shoot in Raw + JPEG fine, normal and basic. I guess that's a bit like belt and braces. You try to get the shot right first time in the camera but just in case you don't then there is always the raw file to work on.
Camera specification
| Mega-pixels: | 10.2 |
Photo: | JPEG, NEF |
| Optical Zoom: | 3x |
RAW: | No |
| Lens Mount: | Nikon F |
RAW: | Yes (Nef) |
| LCD: | 2.5 inch |
FPS: | 3 |
| Dimensions: | 132 x 103 x 77mm |
Shutter: | 30 sec to 1/4000 |
| Weight: | 585g |
Exposure: | ISO 100 to 1600 |
| Storage: | SD (+SDHC) |
Movie: | No |
| Battery: | Li-Ion EN-EL3e |
Microphone: | No |
| Interface: | USB 2.0, AV |
PictBridge: | No |
