NIKON F80.VERY GOOD.ART SCHOLAR OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY

This a very nice piece of equipment.The photos are excellent,whilst the quality of the handling for this camera is superb.Ive had it since it came out and am extremely pleased with its behaviour.It is the equivalent of the brand new Minolta Dynax 9! at £1400.00! What Camera, highly esteemed camera magazine gives it a modest 93%, I would happily give it 100%, 5 gold stars *****. Extremely good,10/10.

Dissapointed

The Nikon f55 is pleasing eye candy, it is a nice shape and very good looking camera, but its functions arent all what they seem. The main annoyance to me was that viewfinder, it is rubbish, all blurry at times and you cant focus very well on the wide angle lense they provide you with. The Aperture button and Shutter speed Dial and in an awfully inconvienient place. As of this moment I havent tested the sharpness in the prints.

Clear As A Bell!

I brought this screen to replace the standard split screen suppled with the FM3a which I have never found particularly good - a jack of all trades approach by Nikon. This screen resolved that for me and it provides a very clear image with no distractions and far better focusing area. It works great with medium telephoto lenses and is also ideal with wide angles.

Nice camera with a couple of serious drawbacks

This is a pretty nice camera, and I wish I could rate it higher. However, it has a couple of serious drawbacks...

Firstly, no remote shutter activation facility whatsoever.

Secondly, no depth-of-field preview. This is an important aspect of composition, and a serious drawback if you're trying to learn photography.

As this camera was otherwise great value and well-featured for its time (late 1990s), it smacks of Nikon protecting sales of their more expensive models.

These limitations aside, this is a good camera, and seems to be available *very* cheaply secondhand. However, its successor (the F65) supposedly includes both an infrared shutter release (although you have to buy the remote separately) and depth-of-field preview. I'd recommend you check that out first; the F60 is still a nice little camera though.

A great starter/mid range SLR

I have owned my F65 for about a year now and have been very impressed with is quality and ease of use. I purchased this camera with the standard 28-100 lens and the 70 -300 lens. These two lenses have so far done me good.

I have used the camera for various uses, including, studio work. still lifes, landscapes and wildlife. I have found it a very easy camera to use.

For a beginner you have plenty of good features, the auto modes work very well, given time you will be encouraged to start using the aperture or shutter priority modes and then eventually into full manual exposure

Battery life is superb and you will be able to fire off many 100's of shots before even thinking about changing the cells. The LCD and viewfinder displays are very clear and easy to read giving you all of the information you need.

The new G type nikon lens that comes with this body is also superb, its very lightweight and gives crisp clear results.

Overall, if you thinking about entering the world of 35mm SLR's you cant go wrong with this model, especially at the modest price that it sells for.

A great gadget for a Coolpix that is almost useful

This little gadget is for all Nikon Coolpix digital cameras since the Coolpix 990 (the Coolpix 990 might need a camera 'firmware' update to use it though). It is powered by a small lithium CR2032 battery (supplied) and connects to the same proprietary connection on the camera that is used to transfer images to the computer via USB. The instructions are a big fold out leaflet in multiple languages that aren’t very clear, thankfully the device isn't very complicated to use. The device has two functions both extremely useful, except one of them isn't very well implemented, hence the three star rating. The first function is a straightforward remote shutter release and zoom control. This is very useful if your camera does long 'bulb mode' exposures, which you could use in very low light situations such as night time photography. You can hold the shutter open for as long as is needed to expose the shot without worrying about slight movements caused by holding down the shutter on the camera, which would end up with a blurred photo. The second function is an 'intervalometer' this automatically tells the camera to take shots at certain time intervals which you can specify. This is great for such nifty effects for video such as time-lapse photography - which is why I bought the item. The intervalometer has a maximum setting of 24 hours (you could use this to record a plant growing though you'll definitely need your Coolpix to be plugged into the mains!). The downside is the minimum time interval is restricted to two minutes – no shorter. If your trying to do things like weather changes or crowds of people which usually need intervals of anywhere between 1 and 10 seconds, then the device won't do it, which in the end is just poor design on Nikon’s part. To get round this I just use a stop watch but if you are doing sequence over several hours this soon becomes very tiring and it would be nice to leave the camera unattended which is what the device is supposed to do. I assume this restriction was put in due to the longer shutter lag in earlier Coolpixs, but if you own one of the more recent models they are certainly capable of taking one shot, say every five seconds, more than that if you use a burst record mode. As I said its great accessory that is ‘almost’ useful, never mind Nikon better luck next time.