Nikon Coolpix P80 review

The P80 is Nikon's first new SLR-shaped superzoom camera for almost four years, but its specs are barely distinguishable from the Canon, Fujifilm, Olympus and Panasonic equivalents.

Slightly unusual is the command dial for quickly adjusting exposure settings, similar to those found on SLRs. There's a scarcity of other physical controls, though, and we had to delve into the menu to access ISO speed, white balance and drive mode (for image transfer to a PC). A full complement of manual exposure and focus options is available, but the LCD could do more to preview their effect.

Performance was disappointing, with a four second startup time and an average of 2.5 seconds between shots. Slow autofocus was partly to blame, and we also found it quite temperamental in macro mode. Continuous shooting kicked off at 1.2fps, but after 13 shots it slowed to just 0.6fps.

When shooting at wide angle in bright light, the P80 produced some beautiful pictures with warm, flattering skin tones and crisp details. But image quality quickly deteriorated as conditions became less favourable. When dimmer light required higher sensitivity settings, subtle textures became messy and vague, and shadows excessively noisy. At least Nikon's monochrome noise looked more like film grain than Sony's blotches.

All the cameras on test suffered from barrel distortion at wide angle, giving a slightly bloated appearance. However, the P80 also showed pincushion distortion in telephoto shots, creating a pinched look. A built-in Distortion Control option largely eliminated both problems, but slowed the camera down even further. Strangely, it also introduced chromatic aberrations.

Most disappointing was that focus was poor at full telephoto, so zooming right in made faraway subjects bigger but not much more detailed. This is a pretty fundamental flaw in a superzoom camera. With no features to compensate that aren't bettered by the competition, this is a rare example of a Nikon we can't recommend.