Nikon Coolpix P80 - AVOID !!!!

OMcGovern

Hi,

just a quick post & word of warning for anyone considering these. Don't.

I thought it would be a good 10Mp point and shoot camera, with nice 28mm wide angle lense and up to 18x ( 15x optical ).

Problem 1 : I had an "keymem" 1Gb SD card lying around and thought it would be okay. Seemed to work. But after half a days shooting on my first visit to New York the card got corrupted. Granted the manual says buy from one of the 3 supported manufacturers, think it was Sandisk, panasonic and toshiba.
I got a Sandisk 2Gb SD anyways, and problem solved.

But the camera is terrible.
There's terrible noise at most light levels... speckling which ruins the photo.
It's like it is a 3 megapixel camera and someone just used some crude software interpolation to zoom / increase it to 10 mp.

I'm going to try returning it to circuit city (in the states).
Will have to take a 15% restocking fee penalty :-( but this piece of junk is going back. My 3.2Mp Sony Ericcson camera phone give it a run for it's money on clarity and colour saturation levels.

The noise levels shown in this review Review Link really show what I found too.

Hope this helps a few people avoid my mistake.... at the risk of going for the same manufacturer ( I'm loathe to do it ) I may go for the D40 SLR as it has great reviews.

cheers,
Owen

OMcGovern

Circuit City accepted the camera as a return and gave me my full money back
The customer service girl acted like I urinated in her chips, but accepted my reasons. So I'll withdraw any implied criticism of them.

But the P80 is still to be avoided.
For anyone who's genuinely interested, I can send a sample 10mp picture taken from it.

cheers,
Owen

Thirdfox

D40 is a great buy - great high iso performance:



(Iso 1600 and then pushed by 1.5 stops so effectively iso 4700).

Thirdfox

And low iso give noise free images:



Both pictures taken with the 55-200vr lens (iso 200 if I recall properly).

OMcGovern

Thirdfox wrote: »

D40 is a great buy - great high iso performance:

(Iso 1600 and then pushed by 1.5 stops so effectively iso 4700).

Cheers Thirdfox.

I decided to spoil myself and go for the D60 with 2 lens package.
Gave it half a dozen test shots last night, and it's excellent so far.

Nikon D60 with 2 lense package

TripleAce

Hi! Did you order this from the US? Is the price 729$ all-inclusive or did you have to pay import tax (or whatever is called) on it?

Stephen

You would have to pay at the very least VAT on it in Ireland if/when customs stop it. I think there is zero duty on cameras themselves.