Nikon Coolpix P80 10.1MP Digital Camera with 18x Wide Angle Optical Vibration Reduction Zoom (Black)

Pros- Takes easy pics that look great. Easy navigation.
Cons- I guess if I had to pick one i would say that stupid lens cap, but overall not that big of an issue.

I bought this camara for a trip to Tahiti for 5 weeks. Easy to operate on all the presets which does a great job to just point and shoot. Portrait shots are amazing. Cool panaramic assistance. Still playing around with some of the manual options but seems to be the perfect camera for me. A perfect hybrid camera for the in-between DSLR and the point and shoot babies.

I got tired of waiting for Canon to come out with a new superzoom, and decided to buy a P80 instead. Unfortunately, the P80 operation can be frustratingly slow and the pictures are noisy. When fixing the auto ISO to a range of 64-100 the pictures are still noisy. Even when fixing the ISO to 64 I regard the pictures as noisy compared to the results I can get with a Canon. Comparisons to pictures taken at the same time of the same subject with a P80 and a Canon SX100 show clean looking shots on the Canon and speckled noise in the clear areas (like the sky) on the Nikon P80 images when viewed at 100% in Picasa, for example.

The P80 also appears to be very sensitive to electrical fields. When shooting near an AC distribution transformer (those green boxes you see in suburbs with buried power) the P80's computer went nuts, the colors in the viewfinder shifted to yellow and green only, and the camera couldn't even be powered off. Resetting the camera by removing and replacing the battery brought it back to life. A day later at the same site I had the same issue, only this time the camera would shut down after taking one shot. It took a reset to get the camera to work properly again. I haven't had these problems with the P80 at any other locations. At the same location my wife's Canon SX100 had no problems.

The P80 lens has a nice wide angle and good range, which is the main reason I bought the camera. The P80 also has pretty good anti-shake performance, but it has very slow operation when using the viewfinder, lots of image noise and apparently is quite sensitive to electromagnetic fields. I would not buy this camera again. Next time I will wait until Canon comes out with a new model.

It's overall good digital camera. I sold my D80 & Nikon 18-200 VR and got this. It has 18x zoom, which is great(about 480mm in 35mm camera).

I love its custom white balance feature. Also, with its 'Vivid' feature, it's got nice contrast in pics.
Manual features are little bit uncomfortable, I think it's becuz I used to use DSLR. But it's okay.
Flash isn't bad. It's not like the one from those cheap camera. It actually works well enough that I wanna use it indoor. (I used to use SB800 though.)

There's one BIG con about this product I think.
Which is, the NOISE from ISO!..
I know it's nonsense to compare with D80 for noise reduction, but....
From ISO200, you can see a lot of noise in the picture. Even from ISO100, if you zoom in black color in pic, you can see noises. So, you might wanna stick to ISO64 and use flash, or get some noise.

The size of P80 isn't that big, and not heavy. There's lens cap you can attach from strap so you don't lose.

Overall, I think it's great point&shoot camera that looks like DSLR but not as good as DSLR.(but price wise, P80 is the best)

I bought this as a replacement for my Olympus CZ730U that I used for 4 years and was thrilled at the unique features and clarity of the P80.

The zoom performed extremely well though at times it hunts when trying to get into focus at maximum zoom. I have disabled the digital zoom which to me is useless in any camera.
In night mode there is some difficulty to get the camera to adjust to ambient light even if flash mode is on.

You can shoot great perfectly focused photos of moving objects or if shooting from a car and you want to get that unique photo moment.

I mostly photo shoot model trains and macro details feature is very important. The P80 does an excellent job in macro mode though the flash is disabled in this mode and cannot be used for back fill.

The scene modes are awesome though using this camera for well over two months, in portrait mode there is some difficulty in adjusting the focus to show the blue box, but even with the red box and flash fill photos turnout very well.

In lowest resolution the frame advance is very fast and you can shoot multiple shots without waiting for the camera to save the photo.
This is a con when shooting 10MP FINE which is the highest resolution this camera can shoot, it nearly waits for a full 5-7 seconds before it is ready to shoot another frame.

The video quality is mediocre and wish that Nikon put more oomph into this mode qiven the fact that the lens is very powerful to shoot. Yet another con is in video you cannot zoom the entire range of the lens which gets you to at most 3X-4X optical zoom.

Also the video is restricted to 30 min. clips max but it does create folders that you can edit with the most simple editing software like WMM in Vista. But this is a handy feature to have in the camera if you forgot your camcorder, otherwise stick to a professional camcorder.

The battery life seems to be very good, at least for now since it is new, though I purchased a spare just in case (especially for vacations).

I use a Delkin Pro 16GB SDHC that can store 10K photos in 1MP resolution or well over 3.5K in 10MP mode. Great card from Sams Club.

Overall I must say this camera is a good performer for my application at least in the two months that I have it. I have not ventured to other A/P/M features but feel this will turn out to be as good as the Scene mode.

Hopefully this will not get outdated for at least 5 years to come. This was a good bargain from Amazon and is great value for the price paid.

Recently purchased the Nikon P80. We've only taken 10-15 pictures so far but the camera works and functions well above our expectations. I honestly do not know how anyone could expect anything more for the money. We are completly satisified with the camera.