Nikon Coolpix P80

Opinion: Extremely bad for mid-low light conditions. It cannot
focus and you might have to switch to manual focus
which cannot be done easily. Very disappointed with
reviewers in this website who likes to give review
without using ALL the functions, as I have bought it
based on their reviews. I can't believe people actually
say that this is the best camera. Its so irresponsible!
This is a good day light camera. But come evening,
early morning, dim internal lighting (I am not talking
candle light dim) lighting, it fails miserably as it cannot
focus.

Opinion: I purchased the P80 as a supplement to my D200 and find it to be an excellent
choice, both in the quality of the images and the ease of use. I highly recommend
this choice.

Opinion: I am a beginner, The P80 was an upgrade for me from a cannon power shot SD1000. I bought this camera 3 days before a trip, took it out the night I got it to learn the features. I took some great night city skylite shots the first day I got the camera.

Very easy to learn and use. To be honest I never thought I could take some of the photo's I have. I have taken some great shots at football games from 60 rows up and some great landscape shots as well. The zoom is great!

I have had some trouble with up close photo's of people. Some of that might be me. That is when I pull out the cannon power shot camera.

Overall I think it was a great buy. In fact I would have never been on this website if I would not of bought this camera. It made me believe taking photo's was fun.

Opinion: An excellent one I've ever had. I'll rate it as a thumb up.

It is an upgrade DC for my Canon SD750, and I used it for about 2 weeks now. Worthy to spend $280USD for this small DC with some pro features. (Some website sell it for only $235 now!)

- 18x zoom is unbelievable well-performed. I used it to take pictures for the moon, Jupiter and Venus on Dec 1, and the picture is so nice, almost as same as those pictures posted by professional website for that sky scenery.
- 15 different scene mode are quite functional. Auto mode is not good for night scenery, but the scene mode is really good. I just tried around 7-8 of them, and quite satisfied with the pictures so far.
- Smaller than I expected. Quite handy.
- Sometimes ISO is set too high in auto mode which degrades the image quality. You will get a more satisfied image with a proper scene mode or manual mode.

I would say, it's not a perfect DC, but it will server you well if you use it properly.

And remember, don't blame it if it does not perform as good as a SLR. You pay with 1/3 price of a SLR only.

Opinion: I have bought the camera after reading reviews "it's nearly as good as a DSLR". The shape looks promising too ;-) Well, the construction and body shape are fine, but the innards not really. After testing the camera in various conditions for a whole day I decided to return it. Possibly, just my perfectionism, however I am feeling a lot better with my old D70 + 18-70.

Opinion: It will do almost everything my Minolta SLR will do and is very light and easy to use. Not quite pocket size unless it's a large pocket

Image quality in the lower ISO range is more than acceptable

Opinion: Three months of experience, over 1000 pics with this camera. Very pleased overall. Images are very good for a superzoom (not stellar like with an SLR, but very useable), some barrel distortion on wide angle and IQ is fuzzy at longest focal length but overall not bad IMO. Handy, well built, flash powerful enough for everyday use in most settings. No problems with drained battery (about 300 shots limit though). Once you get accustomed to menu, you are off and running. Video is adequate for my purposes (demo on computer, not TV, etc.); and best liked feature is ability to shoot color and b&w images at same time (deep in the menu, but it's there).

Opinion: This camera is junk. I 'upgraded' from a panasonic fz10 only to find poor image quality. It is poor to think that a camera can be so bad in image quality these days and a significant step backwards from my old Panasonic. In sport mode quite often the picture is ruined with vertical shafts of light across the image (even on overcast days the smallest light source ((car headlights or street lights in the distance)) will trigger this). I emailed nikon about the problem and was told to avoid taking these sort of shots in sport mode but in portrait mode it is too slow to capture the action anyway.

Opinion: I have bought two of these during the past couple of weeks and found them to be fantastic. Considering that I am a D70 and a D80 user I think this camera has a lot to offer.

The reason for buying two was so that my wife and myself can enjoy the hobby and not have to carry quite a lot of equioment with us. I find the Zoom range and even the electronic zoom still capable of producing a "record" shot if required.