Technology A Nifty Nikon for Serious Shutterbugs Both amateurs and pros will appreciate the consistently high quality and advanced features of the D80, though it may be too costly for some Technology Product Review By Burt Helm I'll admit it. Sometimes, I wish I were one of those hipster guys who walk around with their Converse sneakers, rectangular glasses, and zip-up hoodies taking artsy photographs of everything where I live in Brooklyn. I've never really been a true camera person. Typically I leave it to my friends or family members to take the snapshots at parties, and I have never owned an advanced model. But it's a hobby that fascinates me, I love art photography, and I've always thought it would be interesting to capture some of the unusual or striking aspects of my neighborhood. So I jumped at the opportunity to help out with BusinessWeek.com's review series on digital single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras, the advanced models that mimic the manual controls of a traditional film SLR camera (see BusinessWeek.com, 10/6/06, "Sony's Altogether Smart Alpha"). Recently, I checked out the Nikon D80, a pricey 10.2-megapixel model that comes with tons of advanced features, seven different automatic preset modes, a custom program mode, and the manual control settings. It retails for about $1,000, and lenses are sold separately (the company supplied me with a Nikon AF-S DX 18-135mm f3.5-5.6 zoom lens, which sells for about $500). To sum it up: The D80 is a near-perfect choice for an amateur photographer who wants to dive headfirst into the hobby and teach himself advanced photography, as long as he doesn't mind the stratospheric price tag. I took the camera on a two-hour photo safari around my neighborhood, out to dinner with friends, to a house party, and then to a bar to take some shots in low light. In every case, I tried out several of the preset modes to see the difference between them, along with trying to get an even better shot or taking an unexpected slant on the scene using the manual controls. <leadin>SHARP ON AUTOMATIC.</leadin> Before I set out, I got a short primer from one of our senior photo editors, Andrew Popper, on how to use the manual controls. (Andrew later took the camera out for a <cite>BusinessWeek</cite> shoot to get a pro's point of view, with some of his thoughts below.) As with most SLR cameras, you can set the camera to three different manual modes. One is geared to the shutter speed, which controls how fast the camera lens opens and closes, and another focuses on aperture size, which affects the focal length. These two work in tandem—the wider the opening, the faster the shutter goes to prevent too much light from going in—and then there is a third to give you complete manual control. There is also a program mode, which starts out with the automatic settings but lets you tweak from there. On the automatic setting, the camera does a very competent job. Shots taken on this setting looked like the high-quality results you'd get from a basic point-and-shoot camera, and none were particularly stunning or eye-catching. But photos were much more consistently of good quality than on any of the simpler point-and-shoots I've reviewed previously. Even in bad light, when subjects were moving, or in other unfriendly conditions, the D80 almost always managed to get pictures that were sharp and properly exposed. Its consistency was noticeably higher than that of conventional cameras. I wasn't wowed by the preset modes. The results are noticeably different from what you get when the camera is set to automatic, but they aren't perfect. Sitting outside on the patio of the house party, for instance, shots taken with the "night portrait" mode (there was low light) often came out very blurry and unfocused, and the background light bled into the faces of the subjects. The background was much better exposed than when on the automatic setting, but the balance wasn't right to deliver a decent shot with any dependability. <leadin>ENTHUSIAST MODE.</leadin> To be fair, Andrew tried out the sports preset on his shoot—with the Dow hitting an all-time high, he went out to capture the light-up ticker board in Times Square—and said he thought it worked well. Using program mode, he took a shot of the board that was published in <cite>BusinessWeek</cite> magazine's Oct. 16 issue (page 36), if that gives you an idea of how well a pro can do with this camera. For an enthusiast like me, though, the D80 is most fun on the manual settings, and it works well as a learning tool. The combination of automatically adjusting readouts, a clear display screen, and a high-capacity memory card gives you plenty of room to experiment. For instance, when you switch to a preset mode, it conveniently displays the aperture, shutter speed, and flash type the camera is using in the specific situation. Then you can go into a manual mode and tweak that setting on your own, and check out what you get on the large, 2.5-in. LCD screen. After a day of messing around with the camera, I found myself starting to get a feel for how specific aperture and shutter settings would affect the outcome, and it was easy to see how that could quickly become intuitive. And by setting the manual controls to extremes, you can take really striking pictures that would be impossible with a point-and-shoot. Returning home at night, I set the camera down gently on the pavement of a quiet tree-lined street, turned off the flash, and set the shutter time to 30 seconds to collect all the ambient light. The result was a photo with ethereally bright street lamps and a warm ghostly glow all over the street. So all told, I really had fun with this camera. If I had $1,000 to spare, I'd definitely buy it for myself. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2006/tc20061011_791662.htm http://images.businessweek.com/ss/07/11/1128_greenpeace/index_01.htm,http://images.businessweek.com/ss/07/11/1128_greenpeace/index_01.htm,http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2007/tc20071121_238911.htm False