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Author
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Dutchie
Forum Regular
Registered: October 2006
Location: Lancashire
Posts: 979
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Review Date: Tue November 21, 2006
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: £725.00
| Rating: 10
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Pros:
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Easy to learn camera. Clear pictures with the default settings
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Cons:
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Might be a bit big and heavy for some people.
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First impression was very good  Both me and my husband have had a good go with it. And we are very impressed. The pictures are clear and the difference with our point and shoot camera is big. We still have a lot to learn as yet. But I would certainly recommend this camera with the 18-135mm lens. The 18-70mm lens is nice aswell but for me not enough to keep me going for a while. The handling of the camera is easy enough. It didn't took my husband too long to find out some of the settings behind those buttons. And that was without the booklet! He has never had any interest in camera's at all, but this peace of kit did make him very curious and he made some very nice pictures too. I like the fact that you have all these buttons instead of a mega menu to go through. Once you get handy in them, it will take you seconds. No hassle with a menu before you can make that shot, which was a pain with my point and shoot sometimes.
So for anybody who is in two minds about this camera yet. For me it was definitly worth the money. The camera is easy enough to handle for a starter. I can't wait till the weather gets a bit better and i've got time to use it 
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j sotelo
Feet under the table
Registered: November 2006
Location: San Diego, Ca. Where the Surf meets the Turf
Posts: 2435
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Review Date: Sun November 26, 2006
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: £524.14
| Rating: 10
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Pros:
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10 Megapixels allow you to do some cropping in photoshop
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Cons:
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none so far
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It's my first DSLR camera and I love it Photography is just a Hobby for me and With this camera im also making some money   had it a couple of months and it allready paid for itself and giving me some money to save for a nice strobe lighting set ... and like I mentioned, with 10 megapixels theres plenty of room to do some photoshoping jejeje
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mondeo
New here
Registered: November 2006
Location: Basingstoke
Posts: 9
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Review Date: Mon November 27, 2006
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: £545.00
| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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Well balanced, 10Mp, 3fps, quick AF, wireless transponer to SB600 flash
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Cons:
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non as yet
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I bought the D80 as an upgrade from a D50. At the time I was looking at the D200 but found that too complicated for me, plus the D80 has the security of Auto mode for those "just in case" moments. I use Manual mode 95% of the time.
I was happy with the D50 but wanted a body with more features of which the D80 has, an extra command dial is a godsend as you dont have to press buttons to get to the aperture settings, the backlit info screen is a must in low light, and that 2.5" screen is fantastic. The increase to 10mp has its benefits also.
I have not experienced any hot pixels or back focusing as has been reported on the net.
For the money, it is an excellent body and I can thoroughly recommend it.
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Soupdragon
Forum Regular
Registered: October 2006
Posts: 1102
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Review Date: Wed January 17, 2007
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: £699.00
| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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Awesome build quality vs price
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Cons:
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No real raw conversion software
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Having purchased said camera and had a weekend of burning holes in swmbo's lillys with the on board flash I can now report the following.
My concerns about compressed raw transpired to be un-founded and this format will suit my needs in every respect.
0.4 second shutter delay as opposed to true MLU made me very edgy.
Tests over the weekend revealed that this (albeit not perfect) did make considerable improvements over no delay what so ever.
I can assume from this that the Nikon engineers looked at the decaying sine time and deemed this to be adequate for most situations.
The 18-70 lens is incorrectly branded a kit lens, it is not, it is a good optical and mechanical quality consumer zoom, the copy I have is sharp across the range. I was put off the 18-135 version purely because it had a plastic lens mount.
By comparison to other cameras in the same league it screams quality and is a pleasure to use.
I had not realised just how much use the top plate lcd was and, to this end, will struggle to consider any camera in the future which does not sport one.
The down side, as ever, is the lack of a decent bundled software pack for image conversion, Canon DPP is undeniably good.
The speed at which it acheives focus lock is beyond what a camera of this price should be capable of.
The ability to overlay grid lines in the view finder is super for getting horizontals and verticals right and have now left this switched on permanently.
Anyone who is umming and arrring about which consumer 10mp DSLR to splash out on would find themselves more than pleased with the purchase of a D80.
This is not meant to be a slight aimed at other systems, just my initial findings.
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eighty
New here
Registered: January 2007
Location: Southern England
Posts: 29
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Review Date: Tue March 20, 2007
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: £600.00
| Rating: 10
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Pros:
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Easy to use and big enough for my "chunky" paws
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Cons:
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cost, software in the box
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Having got the camera in January, and spent three weeks in India with this camera, it was a baptism of fire for me and the camera.
I love it. It's chunky enough to fit in my big hands comfortably and all the buttons and dials feel like quality items that are not going to break any time soon.
The 18-135 kit lens is extraordinary for a kit lens. It gives crisp clear pictures and lets in loads of light.
I bought other bits with this camera (not in the price above) and would recommend a spare battery and at least two 2gb sandisk extreme iii cards. Don't skimp and go for anything less that 2gb.
The menus are fast and efficient and the lcd screen on the back is very clear and bright. I've not had any trouble seeing it even in the blinding light of the arid planes of India.
The other thing I bought with this camera was a Lowepro bag. It was virtually indistructable and even took a pounding when I crash the motorbike I was and had this strapped to the back of.  The bag saved the camera, even if it did sacrifice itself in the process. Thanks to the £20 bag, the £600 was saved and still works fine. So obviously enough padding in there for almost every occasion.
The only niggle with this camera is the software that comes with it. It is rubbish. I have been and purchased Photoshop Elements 5 instead of using the Nikon s/w that comes with. I've even tried the Nikon Capture NX and that's not too good either. 
I would also say that I am a complete novice with Digital SLRs and this camera is very very very forgiving. In auto mode it's fool proof.
Forget about scrimping and cost cutting, just buy it. You will never regret it.
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skin_2
New here
Registered: March 2007
Location: Oxford
Posts: 8
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Review Date: Tue March 27, 2007
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: £737.00
| Rating: 10
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Pros:
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Price and performance
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Cons:
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supplied software
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If you compare the D80 with the D200, pretty well all the 'picture taking' parts of it are the same but at a much lower price. I bought mine in January with the 18-135 lens which really works very well. The down side is that it can't be used with the film SLRs, but I'm unlikely to want to. Over the years I've used the F, F3 and F801 for work and most of the lenses for those will work with the D80. It's hard to imagine going back to film nowadays. I also have the 70-300 VR lens, and the image stabilisation is good although it isn't a very fast lens. In spite of this, the viewfinder image is generally quite bright and the autofocus mostly works, although I prefer to use manual for studio sets most of the time. A faster flash sync speed could be an advantage in some situations, but most of the time (and certainly for studio work) 1/80 sec is fine. I'm not quite sure why Nikon decided on using SD cards rather than CF, but this doesn't seem to be much of a disadvantage. It's SDHC compliant so you can use the high capacity cards. I got a 4Gb 300x speed one from 7Day shop for £16.99 and even shooting in Raw plus Fine JPEG that gives me over 500 shots. The after market battery from 7Day shop seems to be fine too and only costs £15.99.
The software is not a lot of good, and annoyingly it also overrides the Photoshop camera raw plug in, although you can disable it, which I did.
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BeanPod
Quite Chatty
Registered: June 2007
Location: British Columbia, Canada
Posts: 79
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Review Date: Sat August 18, 2007
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: £517.00
| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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size, speed, ease of use, fairly intuitive controls
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Cons:
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none come to mind
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Price is converted from approx 1090.00 CAD.
This is my first digital SLR. I've been shooting like a fiend with it for several months now, and I could write a book on how much I like it! 
It starts up so fast, and shoots fast even in raw...very impressive.
The menus are easy to navigate, and the two command dials are smooth and positioned perfectly. Most of the controls on this camera are placed well and with a bit of experience are easy to find quickly.
The grip is great, feels very secure, and many controls are accessible without moving my hand much, which makes me really want to keep shooting! I've used uncomfortable cameras before, and it makes such a huge difference to have one that 'fits'.
I turned off the lcd screen right away, and use it only when I need to see something, so battery life for me has been stellar.
Picture quality is great with all of the lenses I have used. I've not discovered any weaknesses at this point.
Overall, I am completely impressed with this camera. It is a great fit for me.
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