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Reviews > Electronics > Cameras & Photo > Digital Cameras > Nikon D80 Digital SLR Camera Review

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Nikon D80 - Product Review

Reviewed on 06/06/08       Plays: 927

Review of the Nikon D80 from a functional perspective. Nikon D80 10.2MP Digital SLR Camera (Body only), Digital Cameras, Electronics

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Transcript of Featured Review

All right today I wanna talk about this new camera that I got. I can say it s really brand new. I got it last year. It s the Nikon D80 and here it goes. It s just the body I wanna kinda review with you. The Nikon D80 when I purchased it was about $900 $999. I think today you can find them for $800 or $899. It does come with the lens when you purchase it. I don t recommend buying the lens. I d rather spend that money towards a better quality lens. The lens aren t bad but I think most photographers would want something a little more versatile and so I spent that money on a lens that would better suit me. So if you take a look at the Nikon D80 here it comes with a strap here. I should probably just take this off because it s gonna hinder the view but most of all that even people choose between the Nikon or the Canon the Canon was really kind of the first to the market with these kind of amateur camera models with the Rebel and Nikon kinda slowly just came out with these models. I think today they have a Nikon D40X and D60 and then they have the D80 which is new and in between there. But this was kind of the first model I felt was good enough to spend the money on so that you don t have to keep buying new camera bodies. This model is very sturdy. I m gonna talk about their quality and nature. I kind of felt the two when I was gonna buy them and I really felt that the Nikon had a better quality construction. It felt a little bit more sturdier. The buttons felt sturdier. You can take a look at the back here. These buttons all felt very in place. They didn t kind of move around and I felt the Nikon they were very more almost toy-ish I thought but that s kind of my opinion. But when I held this one I really felt that they re secure and like a really good quality construction. Secondly you could feel the weight on it. It had a really good ergonomical feel to it. It really fits the hand there. It's really easy to use and easy to shoot with so I really like the comfort. When you re carrying around a camera for many hours sometimes you can tend to get tired and comfort becomes a good factor so I really like the way this feel. The Nikon D40 and the D60 I haven t touched the D60 yet or shot with the D60 but the D40 in comparison is a little smaller it s a little more compact. You can get a lot of stuff for your money and if you re on the budget it s a great camera. But this one it feels more like it fits your hand where the D40 is a little smaller and doesn t really quite fit the hand as well but you do get a lot of functionality. Some of the differences was that the D80 can do is that you can get or you can use your old lenses. If your lenses don t have a motor built in to it then the D80 has a motor built in it for auto focusing. Today s lenses tend to have built-in motors so there s that so you could use it with your old Nikon lenses if you have a whole bunch of them. Secondly the functionality of this there s so many functions on here but I don t really wanna go through all of them because it would take forever but I will talk about the ease of use of those functions. Basically this thing is a mini computer inside. You can do a lot of photo editing in here but most photographers don t. They choose to do their photo editing outside on a computer. But if you wish you can crop black and white add filtering just change the whole picture you can layer pictures. There s a lot of functionality in here and I really like the way that you can get around their menu screen. I ll kind of show you some of it so you can see and find out that good but anyways on the left hand side is a bunch of kind of different menu options. There s a camera writing fixing time and things like that and underneath those there s a number of other different options that kind of break down so it s really kind of easy to find where you wanna go to. So if you want camera functions you can look at these options here and really adjust them on the fly so I really like that functionality of it. It s really easy when you take a picture. You can have the option of obviously the camera will take a picture and then show the picture really quickly so you like that and then you can really easily just delete it here so that s kind of nice. Everything is really comfortable as far as where the buttons are located at. I really enjoyed that when I was reviewing it. The menu options here on the side when you grab it with your hands they re very accessible. There s kind of a I don t wanna say joystick but I don t know a movable pad here that s really easy to maneuver around so that was really nice. You have all kinds of flexibilities. You can bracket exposures you can underexpose you can change autofocus you can shoot continuous you can do autofocus you can do the remotes so if you wanna take a picture of friends and family there s a wireless remote that you can attach to it and set up on a tripod and then click away with your wireless remote. So that is a lot of great functionality in here. I was really happy with that. So I talked about the quality. I really liked it. The ease of use I thought was very important in taking this. Features were really convenient. And if you re looking to get a camera I definitely recommend the D80 as far as entry level to it s almost professional. It s kind of in-between. If you re really looking just for a DSLR that s just gonna get you started and you re not quite sure how far you wanna go the D40 or the D60 is plenty but the D80 is kind of getting into that mid-range between and the next step would be the kind of the professional camera with the D300 and then the Nikon D3. But for those ones the D300 is $1700 the D3 is $5000. This one I think can get you in for very good quality pictures. It takes pictures very fast. There's nine frames per second if you want. It has an auto ISO which will take up to it actually goes up to 6400. It gets grainy at that point but that is an auto ISO so your quality of pictures it will adjust the quality based off the lighting so you don t have to fiddle around with what ISO quality you want. It ll actually figure that out for you so that you can just take pictures. So even though there s a lot of features in here and there s a lot of functionality it s really simple just to set it on auto and just start shooting away and you ll get great pictures in the end. So I hope that answers any questions that you had about the Nikon D80. So I hope you enjoy it. Thanks a lot.

Nikon D80 Digital SLR Camera

Average Rating:

5 stars

based on 6 video reviews

Includes 18-135mm F3.5-5.6 Lens / Uses F mount lenses / SD Memory Card Slot / USB 2.0 / 2.5-inch LCD / 3D Color Matrix Meter Up to 2,700 images per battery charge - High-Efficiency power systems featuring reduced power consumption and Real-Time Fuel Gauge with Nikon's EN-EL3e Lithium Ion...

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Summary
  • 10.2-megapixel CCD captures enough detail for large, photo-quality prints
  • 2.5-inch LCD display; power-up time of approximately 0.2 seconds
  • RAW and JPEG capture; burst mode allows for capture of three frames per second for up to 100 pictures
  • Image optimization functions and in-camera image retouching
  • Includes 18-135mm AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor lens
Details
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