Nikon D80 Announced!

Nikon announced a new digital SLR this week - the D80. It's pretty much a hybrid of the D200 and the D70 - 10 MPixels, 3fps, mixture of D70 and D200 controls, and is selling for about CDN$1200 ($US 999). It looks like it's going to be another big hit for Nikon this year (the D200 is still on backorder at most stores).

The only catch I can see with the D80 is that it takes SD cards instead of Compact Flash cards! This is probably going to be turn off for any photographers who want to get a D80 as a backup to their existing D200/D70s, as they take CF cards. Who wants to go buy new cards that are incompatible with their existing cameras? Oh well, this should still be a great answer to competition from Sony and their newly introduced 10MP DSLR the 'Alpha'. The Alpha looks like a great camera by the way, and will be 100% compatible with Konica-Minolta's SLR lenses (Sony took over K-M's camera operations recently). This gives Sony an excellent inventory of lenses for their new camera making them very competitive against SLR giants like Nikon and Canon.

For some interesting preview articles on the Nikon D80 check out the following links (all open in new windows/tabs):
- Lets Go Digital's D80 Preview
- Rob Galbraith's D80 Preview
- Ken Rockwell's D80 Preview

For more on the Sony Alpha take a look here:
- Lets Go Digital's Sony Alpha Review

In addition, Nikon announced two new lenses - 18-135mm AFS and a 70-300 f4.5-5.6 AFS VR to beefen up their digital lens (DX) line ups.

It should be interesting to watch how consumers react to the large selection of low-priced DSLRs hitting the market. Too many choices is usually not a bad thing!