It’s been a while since I bought myself an old Nikon D80. I chose this particular camera because it was one of the last DSLRs still using a CCD sensor. Those sensors were quickly replaced with different types offering better performance in low light and features like live view and video.
Still the D80’s sensor has a pleasing color output and tonality. There is something to it that modern sensors can’t quite capture even though they are objectively much better. Additionally the D80 only really works well at base ISO which is set at 100. Going up to 200 is totally fine but ISO 400 already becomes pretty noisy and image quality suffers.
What does this mean. The Nikon D80 is really only usable in good lighting conditions. A grey overcast day can already be a challenge. It reminds me of my days with my first proper camera and me lugging around a tripod all day. Am I glad technology evolved so much as to make tripods less important.
Unfortunately the winter weather in Northern Europe is usually grey and dark so I had very little opportunity to actually enjoy my Nikon’s nice colors. But as I was already in Berlin I figured I try some black and white images and see how the camera deals with these conditions. I was positively surprised.