frank_vanriper's Full Review: Nikon N80 QD Body Only 35mm Film Camera
N80—The Cheap Nikon
By Frank Van Riper
Professional photographer, author and photography columnist for <Washingtonpost.com>
Am I the only human on the planet who thinks the new Nikon N80 is a dog?
Let me amend that. Several of my professional colleagues—ie: people like me who make their livings with their cameras and therefore have to depend on them more than most—can’t believe how cheaply this otherwise remarkable camera is made. And that doesn’t even cover the PLASTIC lens mount on its recommended lens, the new D-series 28-80 f.3.5-4.5!
For a brief instant, when I first held this camera, I thought that the small, lightweight, almost toy-like, N80 I was holding was a plastic dummy, or worse: a counterfeit. I certainly didn’t view it as a camera following in the proud tradition of one of Japan’s most respected and successful camera makers.
It turns out I was wrong. It was a Nikon—though one that had never seen Japan. The largely plastic camera body had been made in Thailand.
And it turns out I was wrong, too, when I dismissed the camera out of hand as a literal and figurative lightweight.
Nikon has packed a lot of technical innovation, a lot of user-friendly design [improving on its popular N60 and N70]—in short, a hell of a lot of camera—into a really chintzy polycarbonate body. It’s a body, by the way, that seems to have been made to look from afar like the rugged, rubberized exterior of the take-no-prisoners, top-of-the-line F5 and its newer no. 2, the F-100.
But at a list price of $599 (street price $499), the N80 is almost a third of the cost of an F-100 and a sixth of the cost of an F5. For those kinds of savings, one can do without a lot of things—ruggedness being one of them.
In fairness to Nikon—as well as in fairness to Nikon’s North American sales rep John Clouse, who spoke very candidly to me about the new camera’s market niche—the N80 does incorporate a number of novel features that will appeal to all types of photographer. One of these is on-demand grid lines on the viewing screen. Anyone who ever has tried to line up, say, an architectural shot precisely (and without the use of a bubble level) will appreciate this feature. Do the lines clutter up the viewfinder? Well, yes, a little. But the lines can be made to disappear as if by magic with the touch of a button. [I couldn’t believe this the first time I tried it.]
Like many consumer grade cameras, the N80 features a puny little pop-up flash. While many pros might dismiss this feature since they routinely travel with tons of their own lights, amateurs or tourists will love this feature, not only because it’s so portable, but also because the flash can be programmed for different fill-flash ratios—a great feature that turns the puny little flash into a creative tool. There’s even the optional “Diffuser SG2”, a.k.a. a little piece of white plastic, that attaches to the pop-up flash to modify the light even further.
Additionally Nikon has retained real depth-of-field preview, often one of the first things to go when a camera-maker cuts costs. Also, the N80 allows for use of a conventional screw-in cable release, freeing us from having to shell out additional bucks for an electronic version.
I found metering on the camera to be up to Nikon’s usual excellent standard, though I found its touted auto-focus tracking a bit sluggish compared to its much more expensive cousins. And the film drive sounded positively anemic.
In all, though, good guts.
If only this camera didn’t live in such a cheap, lightweight body. I doubt very much that such a body will be able to withstand continued hard use. And the plastic on the lens mount is unforgivable.
With admirable candor, John Clouse, Nikon’s North American sales manager, defended his 28-80 lens, but only just so much. “The 28-80 is the only lens that’s like that,” he noted, adding that the plastic on the lens was added because of “strictly a competitive situation.” That is: Canon and Minolta make a similarly cheap lens, so Nikon followed suit. [Thinking like that did not make Nikon the great camera company that it is. One hopes that this is an anomaly, not the start of a dismal trend downward.]
With skyrocketing sales figures to back him up, Clouse did point out that the N80 and lens is “made for the exact niche” in the amateur camera-buying market that values lightness, portability, compact size and user-friendly electronics. And he made another point that went along way toward stifling my bellyaching about the “cheapness” of his company’s new camera.
Noting that Nikon has been selling literally thousands of its amateur-aimed SLR’s (like the N70 and N60)—and recalling that I had mentioned my love for my pro-level F-100—Clouse declared, “You can’t sell an F-100 for $1300 if you don’t (also) sell thousands of N60’s and N70’s.”
Check out Frank Van Riper’s latest book, Down East Maine/A World Apart.
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