Nikon D80 > Reviews > A D200 squeezed into a D70 body

Author's product rating:   

Picture Quality	Excellent
Range & Quality of Features	Excellent
Ease of Use	Very Easy
Overall Look & Design	Excellent
Value for Money	Good

Advantages:	viewfinder, resolution, lcd, menu system, build, professional, responsive, metering, battery, d - lighting, AF, ergonomics
Disadvantages:	dslr dust(?), kit lens CA, incandescent white bal, price, expensive RAW software extra .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

The long-awaited upgrade/replacement to the D50 &/or D70s, the D80 is a sterling product which packs an awful lot into a tried-and-tested body.

As this is a review, not a specification list, its features will be reviewed, not listed (which is surely why you visit Ciao!); specs are all over the internet, the implementations of these features are what we need to know . . .

First off, the body
Ergonomically, this is as good as they come for entry-level and semi-pro bodies. A mix of the d50's lightness and compactness, with the d70's solid feel and build-quality, it is a wonder to hold and use. Many compare this to the Canon 350D/400D, which is physically much smaller and more cramped to hold. You only have to pick the d80 up to be won over from it's rivals, it's perfectly balanced, even with the lens attached, and feels solid enough to withstand any kind of usage. [Compared to the canon 350d, this feels pro-like, the Canon's feel like toys.]
The controls are placed as naturally as possible, with dedicated buttons to delete and bracket images, and shared buttons for ISO, white balance etc depending weather you are reviewing or shooting images. The memory card bay, which once felt like it would pop-open on the d70, is now much smaller (thanks to SD memory card size) and its integrated into the side of the hand grip, well out of the way; this is great as it doesn't distract from the back to of body, which is perfectly laid out, and very easy to navigate and control.

The LCD on the back is now a huge 2.5", with increased resolution, a greater viewing angle (170dgrees), and the d200's fonts & menu system; overall, this is a huge improvement over the d50/70, and beats the competition for clarity, speed and ease of use. Images can be viewed at 100% (1:1) now, and look bright, clear and, when combined with the 3 colour RGB histograms, allow much greater examination in-camera of your images. It produces bright, sharp images & text in all conditions, reducing glare as much as possible, too. Provided is the lcd cover to prevent damage/scratches, which works well and doesn't impair viewing of the lcd.

Viewfinder
Moving inside the camera; this is where the D80 really blows away the competition. Borrowing much of the professional & applauded D200's features, everything is as good as you'd hoped for. A much bigger (0.94 magnification, vs. .75 for the d70) viewfinder gives you a huge, clear view of your framing/shot, and this is the first thing that stands out when using this camera. Not only is it bigger, but its brighter, thanks to the d200's prism, reducing strain on your eyes and making it a pleasure to work with. With that comes the borrowed 9-point focus point mode, allowing you to frame your shot and set the focus and colour balance without having to move around to fit a point into the fewer d70 AF points.

Resolution
Not much to be said here: the d200's awesome 10mp sensor, producing larger, sharper, noise-fee (at the new ISO 100) images than the d70/d50; with a 2 channel readout, better noise control, a physically larger sensor , this is one of the best sensors available at this price range. 3872x2592px images allow cropping and printing to be done to greater levels than before, without a significant drop in image quality. RAW support is Nikon's nef file, producing sharp, detailed images.

Responsiveness
As usual, Nikon have excelled at this too. Start-up to first capture is sub-second, meaning you never miss a moment. It's ready to shoot faster than you can move you hand & fingers, and shutter lag is virtually excluded. Focussing has been improved, providing ultra-fast auto-focussing with all lenses supported; the menu system is responsive, allowing you to fly through the menus without having to wait for them to load; this is great, as once you know the menu system (which is easy) you'll be flying through them changing settings faster than you could say them. Another nice feature is the inclusion of the top lcd light on the power switch, making it faster to illuminate the control panel. Ultimately, the slowest part of this setup may well be the user in framing the shot and clicking the shutter button!

IQ
Image quality is, as expected, superb. Again, as it uses the same sensor as the d200, images are large, sharp, and crisp. With 10mp, more operator errors (hand-shake, movement etc) will be visible with the increased resolution, but ultimately images are excellent. RAW provides finer detail to be captured (over jpeg use), but both formats give excellent images.
Saturation, resolution, hue, brightness, exposure, sharpness - all are tuneable in the menus or via the buttons & control dials on the body.

Metering has been tuned further, using the newer 'II' system from Nikon's range. This gives spot-on colour balance, sharp, contrast-y images with lots of room for post-processing. Accurate is probably a good word to describe it here! I have yet to find a situation where the D80's metering has failed; it really is in a class of its own.
The quality of your glass is now more likely to affect image quality, and one can only hope you buy some good glass for this beast of a body!

In-camera
Like the CoolPix series of cameras, Nikon has introduced in-camera control / post-processing features, such as D-Lighting (brightening the shadows without popping the highlights), red-eye reduction, b&w mode, crop and a few others. These are great, and work well, saving the modified images as a new image so as not to 'lock in' your changes on the original. While its probably best to do this kind of processing on a pc, the d80 makes it easy and functional to implement these, creating a nice user experience for upgraders and tweakers alike.
There are 32 custom functions to play around with, too; each are probably worth looking at to make sure you have the camera set up perfectly for your use, but none are especially new, and are much the same as the d70's options.

Kit Lens (18-135)
Supplied in body-only, 18-70 and 18-135 packages, this is also a great value piece of kit. The body having been reviewed and the 18-70 has been done many times (on the d70 kit) I'll explore the 18-135 kit lens, new from Nikon.
First, it has a great range, reaching 135mm (200mm equiv) this is a great all-in-one lens. It can focus pretty close up macro-wise, while extending to a pretty decent range in tele.
Although the build quality is sturdy, it lacks the feel in quality for the 18-70 lens, and also doesn't have a range window on its top.
3.5, 5.6 is the quoted aperture for this new lens, which is fairly slow at the tele end; practically, this means upping the ISO or using a tripod in anything but the brightest of light for the tele end; this is fine, as the D80's ISO is superb, even up to 800; 1600 is still usable.

Nikon have gone all out for sharpness on this lens, and it shows, which is good and bad.
It is very sharp, all over the lens, and all over the zoom range, which rocks. The problem is that this has lead them to sacrifice distortion and chromatic aberration/fringing. Prominent at both ends, less so mid-range, the barrel & pincushion distortion is complex and pretty strong, meaning Photoshop's distortion filter has problems correcting this (spells trouble for architectural photography). Fringing shows up at similar ranges, and is, too, pretty strong. Filters and Photoshop can correct this, but it is very annoying, and easy to introduce into a shot of dark against bright (contrast-y areas).

Overall, a great lens, but some may find better choices in the 18-70 if they don't need the extra zoom (or the 18-200 Nikkor if you can find it!). Distortion has been sacrificed for sharpness, but you can recover this in post-processing - you can't recover sharpness which isn't originally there.

Memory & other
The d80 uses SD memory cards (in comparison to the d70/d200 which use CF cards). This is good in my opinion; while smaller and easier to use/bend, they allow users to use them between cameras, phones, pdas, mp3 players etc, and are equally fast. SDHC allow capacities up to 8gb currently, and they're pretty cheap nowadays. Also, with faster cards, you can shoot an unlimited (to your memory cards capacity) number of jpeg shots.

High-speed usb2 connection allows you to download images much faster than the previous d70, and the programmable button allows you to set it to any custom function you wish, which is great for toggling the viewfinder grid display, or displaying current ISK. Battery life has also improved significantly; but you cannot use d70/d50 batteries in the d80.

Software
NX trial is supplied, and while slow on PC, it does produce a nice environment for editing photos. Output is similar to Photoshop, but the workflow is entirely different. It is somewhat pricey, around £110 in the UK currently; Adobe Camera Raw now supports the d80 nefs, and is available for PSCS2 for free.

In Conclusion
Nikon have listened to feedback and produced another winner! Versatile, strong, fast and powerful, the D80 will suit a range of people, from P&S upgraders, D50/70 users, and even D200 users looking for a 2nd/backup camera. Large, crisp images with accurate colour and focus are easy to produce, with the intuitive menus and responsive controls.
While pricier than its current rivals, I believe it is well worth paying for the extra touches Nikon have incorporated, as it is both a dream to use and produces consistently great images.
Its weak point seems to be distortion on the 18-135 lens, but this can be mostly fixed in post processing, which really brings out the clarity in all images, and is probable required, in a good way, to get the very best out of all dslrs.
I bought a d70s 18-70 6 months ago, and loved it. Now, it has gone, replaced by the D80; this is an exceptional camera and, if you can afford one, I would whole heartily recommend one to anyone looking to get the best images with the best system out there - Nikon.