D80 news

[ian_rees]

<em> The bigger viewfinder </em>

 

<br />Most people who have used the D70/50 for a long time find that a compelling reason,

not a luxury item. D70 finder = broken eyeballs. Not to say the camera is amazing. Its

ISO1600 likely won't be very impressive. And it doesn't meter with AI-S.

[dan park]

Ian Rees

'The Bigger Viewfinder'

 

I was lucky enough to be blessed with 20/15 eyesight. The viewfinder is really not an issue. Not having the ISO value in the viewfinder on the other hand is a big issue for me. I'm not sure but I don't think the D80 provides that functionality.

 

Dan

[jamesnjohnson]

Usually I suffer from a headache during the first intense 30 minutes behind my D70s

veiwfinder. Then my face gets numb and I am ok. I think I can live without the headache and

the numb face my D70s gives me.

[dan_brown4]

Good viewfinder, a very big plus. About the 1005 meter elements, I bet this camera will

meter very accurately, no worries for me.

[frank_skomial]

"Interesting to see the FP High-Speed Sync mode... is this to compensate " - where do you see this ?

 

If it were implemented ? The FP is mostly useless anyhow. Want good sync speeds - get D70.

[albertdarmali]

MLU?

[aaron l]

Hey, check it out, this will keep some complainers happy. According to dpreview, it does have some sort of mirror lockup mode. Isn't this what each and every user on PN always complains about?

 

What the heck is a vertical travel focal plane shutter? Is that like my Canon AE-1 horizontal shutter but vertical?

 

"It doesn't meter with AI/S". So what from Nikon's thinking, how many users in the world is that? 3? Why go to the extra expense for supporting a dwindling, microscopic user base? If you're such a good photographer that you can justify using 20 year old lenses, you should be able to estimate the exposure within a stop and just use the histogram to do fine corrections. I've done that while shooting a 500mm f8 reflex on a D70 for surf shooting and after 2 shots, it was dialed in. It does say it has Combined CPU and AI.

 

It has an automatic Af-s/c mode called AF-A? Interesting, maybe the camera waits 1 second and switches over to AF-C? That would be cool. You get your kelvin controls now. Ends the whining there.

 

Hey, this thing has many more steps of image parameters, like 6 levels of sharpening. I'm getting rid of my D200 right now. Hahaha.

 

Oh, only a synch speed of 1/200. Guess it's the D70/200(FP) when you want to go fast. Sometimes I wish I had the d-lighting function in camera.

 

Wow, that thing is tiny like the D50. Much lighter than my deskweight D200. No more complaints about the viewfinder. No viewfinder ISO - get a D200 for that!

 

Interesting that the "OK" button resides by itself on the right hand side of the LCD. They left the DOF preview on. Am I the only person who uses that thing? Huge improvement - AF selection mode on a button instead of a stupid menu. Awesome! Sure like the zoom/playback function.

 

Nikonusa.com says it'll be available in September and not next year like normal? Get's the camera out quick this time. Course you won't be able to buy it, but hey...we can look forward to availability threads, just like the D200 -still- has.

 

Nice new toy to blow $1k on.

[mawz]

The 420 pixel Matrix Meter II in the D50 is a definite step up from the 1005 pixel Matrix Meter in the D70s. Both meters are about as accurate for exposure, but the Matrix Meter II provides better Auto WB. Metering issues with the D50 vs the D70 from an exposure perspective come down entirely to the fact that the D50 is set to meter about 2/3rds of a stop hotter than the D70s.

 

I'm seriously impressed by the D80, especially since I wasn't all that impressed with the D70s (chose the D50 over the D70 for the better high-ISO performance). With the better finder, grip and most of the interesting stuff from the D200 showing up, there's one of these in my future. Well, if Nikon can actually get stock in stores reliably.

[ShunCheung]

Concerning frame rates, if you shoot sports or action, I would say even 8 frames/sec is insufficient. I can easily use 10 frames/sec or even more, if that were technically possible. (Currently it is the mirror movement that limits the frame rate. If there is no mirror or the camera uses a semi-transparent fixed mirror, you can achieve 10+ frames/sec). See these consecutive shots at 5 frames/sec (0.2 sec apart) how quickly things change:

http://www.photo.net/photo/4375076

 

Memory card failures are rare. In fact, I have never had one myself. However, if you shoot something that has no second chance, such as weddings, one failure is too many. If you check out the Wedding Forum, using 2 memory cards is standard practice for some serious wedding photographers who use the Canon 1D or 1Ds cameras. Ellis Vener also cited that as one of the reasons he switched to Canon.

[robert_m3]

Since the D80 has a sync speed of 1/200 and goes to ISO 100, and the D70s has a sync

speed of 1/500 and goes to ISO 200, does that mean they're effectively equal on the question

of sync speeds for the purposes of fill flash performance?

[efusco]

"The shift to SD memory is a good move. It is suprising how many people have managed to cram a CF card in backwards."

 

Nikon almost promotes that possibility. The card goes in with the back toward you on the D70 and with the front toward you on the D200...pretty easy to mix that up when switching b/w two cameras. I've not done it as I'm pretty gentle with the cards, but I would like to see a move away from those pins...just begging to be damaged IMO.

[terry_rory]

I think this is going to my next DSLR.

 

My D70 is still going strong and I was going to upgrade to the D200 somewhen this year.

 

However the D200 is not worth 1150 GBP (typical UK retail) for what I need. The D80 price leaves me at least 450 GBP extra from my D200 budget for better lens(es) and gives me 10mp and a better VF. In fact the Nikon 'guide price' is very rarely seen in shops so I expect it to be more like 650 GBP than Nikon's suggested 699 GBP.

 

I would like to have seen AI-S compatibility but I am not too bothered by the lack of it.

 

SD card? I don't care. My CF cards will stay with my old D70 anyway.

[leicaglow]

I'm impressed by how close the specs read between the D80 and D200. The only deal killer for me would be the lack of AIS lens integration. I personally don't need all the body sealing and all. Sounds like a great backup body to the D200 though.

[nelsong]

Still no word on the actual size of the thing, all I could find was this on letsgodigital.org<br>

<p>

<a href="http://www.letsgodigital.org/html/review/nikond80/">http://www.letsgodigital.org/html/review/nikond80/</a><br>

<strong>The measurements of the Nikon D80's casing are practically identical to those of the D50.</strong></p>

 

By the looks of it, it's really small, the D70 barely fits on my hand, that for me is a really big drawback.

[jimitoucan]

I disagree, as I was hoping for a cheap? back-up to my D200 but the change to SD screwed

that up. Who needs two different type of cards to confuse a shoot even more? And since the

dials and buttons are different, forget changing bodies on the fly. 10.2 is strickly

a marketing ploy to justify higher prices. 6 or 8 would be plenty for the target market Mikon

is after. But then they already have the sensor for the D200 and if they sell more their cost

probably goes way down giving more profits on the D80 and D200 and their next???

 

What is "Sensor Readout" and why is 4 channel better than 2? Is it write speed?

[tom_burke3]

The actual dimensions are in the dpreview.com Preview: 132mm x 103mm x 77mm.

 

D70s is 140 x 111 x 78, and the D50 is 133 x 102 x 76.

 

So it's almost exactly D50-sized.

[ky2]

<i>"Currently it is the mirror movement that limits the frame rate. If there is no mirror or the camera uses a semi-transparant fixed mirror, you can achieve 10+ frames/sec"</i> ... Actually, 30 years ago we had film cameras that did 14 frames per second. It's definitely doable today.<br>

[ShunCheung]

<I>Actually, 30 years ago we had film cameras that did 14 frames per second. It's definitely doable today.</I>

<P>

So please specify exactly which model that was. Was it an SLR that has a mirror that goes up and down while achieving 14 frames/sec?

If not, you are not comparing apples to apples.

<P>

I recall that Canon has an SLR that uses a fixed, semi-transparent mirror, and that can do 12(??) frames/sec.

[mawz]

Shun: F3HS with MD4H drive did 13.5fps. I believe it locked up the mirror.

 

Canon's RS models with the Pellicle mirror also exceeded 10fps.

[Richard Williams]

"However the D200 is not worth 1150 GBP (typical UK retail) for what I need. The D80 price leaves me at least 450 GBP extra from my D200 budget for better lens(es) and gives me 10mp and a better VF. In fact the Nikon 'guide price' is very rarely seen in shops so I expect it to be more like 650 GBP than Nikon's suggested 699 GBP."

 

You can now pick up a D200 for under 1050 GBP from some reputable dealers, but I'm sure you're right about the D80 street price (at least after the first couple of months - they can probably get the RRP while it's still in short supply).

 

Random thoughts:

 

2700 shots per charge sounds promising (AFAIR 1800 was claimed for the D200 - were the conditions the same except for the lens used?). So what's using the extra juice in the D200? (The D50 and D70s perform similarly despite using different media). Does the AF screwdriver have a bigger motor driving it on the D200?

 

Will the supposedly improved image processing give us less high ISO noise from the 10Mp sensor? - it will definitely be interesting to see the first reviews!

[aaron l]

If you want that kind of shutter rep speed, why not just shoot HD video? Baseball and other high speed sports guys shoot fast stuff with single shot mode all the time. That's how I shoot surfing. I've never used the 5fps mode on the D200 in practice other than to entertain myself. YMMV

[richard_cochran]

<cite>F3HS with MD4H drive did 13.5fps. I believe it locked up the mirror.</cite>

<p>

Actually, the <a href="http://www.cameraquest.com/nf3HS.htm">F3 High Speed</a> camera has a fixed pellicle mirror that never moves up or down. Mirror lock up would leave the viewfinder unusable, which isn't very practical for the type of photography for which the F3H was intended (it was released for the 1998 Nagano Olympic games).

<p>

13.5 fps would blast through a 36 exposure roll in less than 3 seconds. The 250 exposure back doesn't work with the MD-4H. I think I need about four or five of these cameras, with a set of assistants loading them and handing me a freshly loaded camera every three seconds so I can keep shooting...

[ShunCheung]

My wife is a serious amateur videographer. She bought an HD cam a few months ago. Its results is great on our HD TV. I don't think the quality from clipped HD video is good enough for stills, by a long shot. Keep in mind that I am used to the quality from a D2X.

 

And for AF and auto exposure to function while achieving 8, 10 frames/sec, your mirror cannot be permanently locked up. AF and AE only work while the mirror is down. Therefore, even at 8 frames/sec, AF really doesn't have a whole lot of time to fine tune the focusing during the brief period when the mirror is down while you are shooting a moving target. That is an issue the F3 (manual focusing) didn't need to deal with.

 

Anyway, we are getting off topic. This thread is about the new D80.

[Richard Williams]

"What is "Sensor Readout" and why is 4 channel better than 2? Is it write speed?"

 

The number of channels used to transfer data from the sensor. Nikon apparently reads data from both sides of the D200 pixel array at once, which doubles the throughput. This means a higher frame rate, but can potentially make the camera vulnerable to the 'banding' problem if all this isn't calibrated correctly:

 

http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/D200/D200CORDUROY.HTM

[vivek iyer]

I would love to get an F2HS camera, someday. Since G lenses won't work, they are out. :(