Nikon Coolpix P80 Review

The Nikon Coolpix P80 is a 10 megapixel camera with an 18x optical zoom lens. This is one of the longest lenses you will find on a compact digital camera.

The long zoom lens makes this camera a good choice for photographers who are interested in sports and wildlife photography. The manual exposure controls make this camera a good choice for anyone who sees photography as a hobby or potential hobby. The Coolpix P80 is also relatively compact for a camera with such a long zoom lens.

Outdoor 1 (Medium Zoom)
Looking at my first photo the most striking point is the brightness of the shot. The colours are also just right for me too. The Coolpix P80 does a fair job of capturing detail from the lightest and darkest areas in the shot. A small amount of detail is lost where the sun is shining on the boats.

Outdoor 2 (No Zoom)
Here you can see the impact of the wide angle lens. I am impressed by the sharpness of this photo. It is above average for a camera with a wide angle lens.

Outdoor 3 (Maximum Zoom)
With the lens fully zoomed in the shot loses some of its sharpness. Purple fringing is evident when the photo is blown up to a large size, but this common problem is handled better by the Coolpix P80 than most super zoom cameras manage.

Outdoor 4 (Building)
The images produced by the Coolpix P80 are sharp, but perhaps not quite as pin sharp as I had hoped for. Nikon lenses are usually of high quality and I had been expecting the Coolpix P80 to be that bit better than it is in terms of sharpness for more distant shots.

Outdoor Portrait
The skin tones are a bit pink in places, but the level of detail is very impressive. The skin tones were boosted by using a while balance setting of cloudy, so you can reduce the amount of colour by leaving white balance set to automatic.

Indoor Portrait without Flash
This is quite a bright photo. Noise does begin to show up in the shot despite the good lighting levels. As with the majority of consumer level digital cameras it is not easy to get noise free lower light photos without resorting to flash.

Indoor Portrait with Flash
There is plenty of detail in this shot. The light from the flash unit is quite harsh though and you can see where the lighting hits the forehead and cheeks.

Colours
As mentioned above I really like the combination of colour and brightness produced by the Coolpix P80. Aside from the most basic Nikon digital cameras this is one of the strengths of the range.

Macro
The specification states that the Coolpix P80 can focus from 1cm away from the subject. I found difficulty in getting a sharp focus from any distance closer than 5cm. At that distance I found the camera was capable of taking a good quality macro shot.

ISO 400 and 1600
At ISO 400 noise shows in darker areas of the shot. So if you are planning to use a higher ISO to freeze motion you will need plenty of light for the photo. As ISO 1600 there are very high noise levels. I also ran a test for the highest ISO setting of 6400, but I am mystified as to why anyone would want to use this setting when I look at the picture quality it provides. I ran the ISO tests again with the Noise Reduction setting turned on, but it made little difference to the final result.

Overall
The Coolpix P80 does a good job overall. The camera is capable of taking bright, colourful photos. As long as you are not looking to make massive prints of distant subjects sharpness should be fine as well.

I was disappointed with the shutter delay, especially when thinking this camera has a lens that should be good for fast moving subjects such as sport and wildlife. For a single photo I recorded 0.56 seconds and for 5 photos 10.13 seconds. With the flash on times increased to 1.95 seconds for a single photo and 12.72 seconds for five photos. For wildlife and sports it is advisable to use the continuous shooting modes.

You can compare this camera to other models by taking a look at the Shutter Lag Comparison Table.

For a super zoom camera with an 18x zoom lens the Coolpix is quite compact. I like the design and the camera feels right in the hand.

79 x 110 x 78mm

365g

Rechargeable lithium ion (EN-EL5). Nikon estimate you should be able to take up to 250 shots in between charges.

The Coolpix P80 is compatible with SD and SDHC cards. To get you started Nikon have built 50mb of storage into the camera. The is sufficient for around 30 photos.

Click here to save money on SD cards.

Good. With the extra manual controls it will take time to fully get to grips with the camera. It is as straightforward as in can be apart from maybe one or two of the menu options appearing as extra buttons on the body. The control dial on top of the camera and the small selection wheel in the top right hand corner on the back of the camera are very useful.

Style - controls - length of lens

Shutter lag times should be faster

Another recent super zoom camera with a long zoom lens is the Sony DSC H50.

The Nikon Coolpix P80 does the job it sets out to do well. Despite the extra controls it comes across as an unfussy camera and is a good choice for someone looking for as much zoom as possible.

Front View

Back View

Top View

Sample Menu

Although every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the information on this site, please make sure you double check the feature set and specification at the point of purchase.

Nikon Coolpix P80