D80: the wait is soon over
Well, as you can see from the image, which is captured from the official Nikon Japan website, the D80 countdown has now reached 000 days! Man, didn’t these 20 days just fly by? It is now 3am in Tokyo therefore by the time I wake up in the morning, the announcement regarding the specs should have been made. As for the industrial design, well, I guess the whole world has already seen these leaked images.
Because this new Nikon uses SD cards, I doubt it is targeted towards current D70 users. I believe it is more of an upgrade for current D50 users whom have acquired better photo-shooting skills and need a bit more control (and some first time D-SLR users). For current D70 users, it’s only natural to go for something with more controls like the D200, rather than jump onboard an upgrade with a minor megapixel bump and slightly tweaked controls.
To be honest, I’m a little concerned about that 10.2mp CCD. Those who keep an eye out on the D-SLR scene will know that the Nikon D200 also uses a 10.2mp CCD and the amount of noise at higher ISO settings do not fair so well against the competitors. Same goes for Sony’s a100 which also uses a 10.2mp CCD. Since Sony provides CCDs to Nikon, I guess both the Nikon D200 and the Sony a100 is using the exact same thing.
The D50’s 6mp CCD on the other hand, is better than the D200 and D70S in this department, even though the D70S also uses a 6mp CCD. I’m not sure if the D50’s CCD is a tweaked version of the D70S’ or if it’s an entirely new CCD altogether. But due to this fact, I’m holding onto hope that the D80’s CCD will be a little different and produce less noise than the NIkon D200. Fingers crossed!
Anyway, I’m gonna take a shower now, hit the sack, then wake up nice and early!
