DPReview has finally posted their in-depth review of the D80, in the past with my D70 I waited for their review before buying the camera because there were a lot of questions about it, with the D80 I didn’t bother waiting since the word on the ground from those in Asia who got it first were very good.
From the conclusion part of the 29 page review:
The number of cons, and the fact that there are no serious ones, is a testament to the thought and work that has gone into the D80’s design. It’s one of those cameras which just feels ‘right and sorted’ from the moment you pick it up. Things just get better the more you use the camera, you will begin to discover the usefulness of major features like the customizable automatic ISO and the subtle touches like being able to tap the DELETE button twice to delete an image
This is a very good review and they give the camera a 8.83 average out of 10 points.
Very interesting to me are the new areas they’ve started including in their reviews, these relates to RAW vs JPG performance and for me it validates what a lot of people have been saying, always shoot RAW the advantages are staggering, now it’s been quantified.
If you look at Page 19 of the review they go through a test that defines the color range captured in JPG vs. RAW – a full explanation of dynamic range is in their Glossary. The test clearly shows that in a RAW file will give you a lot more luminance out of your images than just shooting JPG would. The D80 now has a RAW+Fine JPG mode so you can get best JPG and RAW files out of it for each photo, this gives you the best of both worlds.
Another RAW vs JPG related test in the review is that of resolution, it basically just takes a group of lines on a piece of paper that comes ever closer to each other, this demonstrates when the camera just cannot tell the difference between 2 lines anymore. The D80 test is on Page 16 near the bottom. From the samples you can clearly see that by just shooting JPG you will loose a lot of finer details in some circumstances.
