The Nikon D80 produced sharp images with very good detail definition. Noise suppression tends to blur detail in areas of subtle contrast, as in the darkest parts of Marti's hair here.

Great definition of high-contrast elements, though very slight edge enhancement artifacts visible. Minimal noise suppression visible in the shadows. Sharp images, though very slight edge enhancement. See thumbnails of all test and gallery images See full set of test images with explanations If you zoom in and follow them from the wider portions, you'll see the lines converge and reappear several times, so the lines you see at 1,900 and higher are really only artifacts generated by the camera's imaging system. Beware that while you might be able to make out what looks like distinct lines at numbers higher than those we've mentioned here, the camera is just doing its best to continue interpreting the lines. Use these numbers to compare with other cameras of similar resolution, or use them to see just what higher resolution can mean in terms of potential detail. Our laboratory resolution chart revealed sharp, distinct line patterns down to about 1,700 lines per picture height horizontally, and 1,600 lines per picture height vertically, with extinction not occurring until well past 2,000. Very high resolution, 1,600-1,700 lines of strong detail. Nikon also seems to have fine-tuned their noise suppression processing in the D80 as well, as it turned in a very impressive performance at ISO 1600, and its ISO 3200 images were surprisingly usable. (While at the same time managing to hold sharpening artifacts to a very low level.) As a result, the D80's JPEG files look quite nice when printed without any added manual processing, a nice feature for a camera that's aimed primarily at high-end consumers and serious amateurs. With the D80, Nikon sems to have tweaked the in-camera sharpening a little, to make its images a little more crisp straight from the camera. This let the D200's images accept post-processing unusually well, but the downside was that the D200's images really needed at least some post-processing to look their best.

With the D200, Nikon took an extremely conservative approach to both anti-aliasing and in-camera sharpening, with the result that JPEG images straight from that camera are quite soft-looking. Evaluating the D80 in this regard is also a bit more straightforward than was the case with the D200. Fortunately for Nikon, this is an area that the D80 does very well in. Imaging and file quality are where the rubber meets the road for digital cameras.

Nikon d80