Nikon D80 - First Impressions

My daughter mixing up some fake snow.
Shot with a Nikon D80 and it's kit lens,
AF-S Nikkor 18-135 ED on full Auto

I got to open up the package with this camera yesterday. I took some test shots just to make sure everything was working and to give myself a start at getting to know the Nikon D80.

The shot with my daughter was done full auto, with the on-camera flash as fill. I'd heard good things about Nikon's flash metering, and I definitely wasn't disappointed.



I left the camera on Auto, and allowed the auto focus to pick the focus point. The highlighted point in the viewfinder was over her right eye, a pretty 
good choice.

The pen is one of my hand crafted fountain pens. This one is a challenge to photograph. The flat gold areas are polished gold titanium oxide plating. The silver areas are silver plating. And the gold nuggets are real gold leaf cast in polyester resin. The highlights are usually overwhelming for an on-camera flash. Blowouts and flare would normally ruin the photo.

Manta Designs Gold Nugget Fountain Pen
Shot withShot with a Nikon D80 and it's kit lens,
AF-S Nikkor 18-135 ED on Macro mode

The D80 handled it very gracefully. Obviously, on-camera flash is a bad idea for this kind of photo, but it helps illustrate the ability of the camera to handle a challenging subject.

The camera came with an AF-S Nikkor 18-135 ED for a kit lens. This is a lightweight plastic bodied lens, as is usual for a kit lens. I was pleasantly surprised with just how quickly it focused, even on difficult subjects. And the images are clear and sharp through the glass.

I walked around the house letting the camera focus on various objects while I worked through the zoom range. The only time it wasn't fast and accurate was when I tried to focus on the wire mesh of our guinea pig cage. It would always choose to focus on whatever was beyond the wire. That's ok, as most of the time I'd be trying to do what it chose to do.

Same fountain pen as above.
Shot with a Kodak Z7590 with strobe
bounced off the ceiling

Manual focus is a matter of setting a switch on the lens. I prefer manual focus most of the time, but for snapshots and such I like autofocus. Being able to switch from one to the other quickly is nice.

The camera has a good balance, slightly weighted to the body with the kit lens mounted. A modest lens on the front (such as a 100mm prime, or 70-300 zoom) would probably balance this better. The 18-135 is just so light. Which is great for carrying a camera around all day.

I'll play around with it some more over the next week to get a feel for just what it does and what the manual settings feel like.