Nikon Coolpix P80 Samples

Below are sample crops from an indoor photograph of a book-spine at each of the Nikon P80's ISO settings. A crop from the Fuji Finepix S100FS at the same ISO setting is shown next to each crop from the P80. Images below are all unmodified 100% crops from their respective cameras taken at the highest quality setting. ISO and white-balance were set on camera, everything else was left on automatic. The last few crops are of lower resolution because of camera limits.

These crops help determine which ISO settings can be acceptably used on these cameras. As noise increases, most cameras compensate with noise reduction which introduces softness. The result is that, while you can partly reduce noise at the expense of details, the maximum acceptable print size gets smaller as ISO is increased. The point at which a print become unacceptably noisy is a matter of personal taste.

Apologies for the over-exposed Fuji crops. It was meant to have the shots taken at the exact same exposure but I forgot that the P80 started at a lower ISO than the Fuji. In computer science we call this an off-by-one error.

Nikon Coolpix P80	Fuji Finepix S100FS
ISO 64 - 2s F5.6
ISO 100 - 1s F5.6	ISO 100 - 2s F5.6
ISO 200 - 1/2s F5.6	ISO 200 - 1s F5.6
ISO 400 - 1/4s F5.6	ISO 400 - 1/2s F5.6
ISO 800 - 1/8s F5.6	ISO 800 - 1/4s F5.6
ISO 1600 - 1/15s F5.6	ISO 1600 - 1/8s F5.6
ISO 3200 - 1/30s F5.6	ISO 3200 - 1/15s F5.6
ISO 6400 - 1/60s F5.6	ISO 6400 - 1/30s F3.5
The Nikon Coolpix P80 produces very usable ISO 64 to 200 shots. The ISO 400 also remains quite usable with a moderate amount of noise but also a slight color shift. ISO 800 can be used for a smaller print but is not too bad. From ISO 1600 onwards, the P80's results are just about useless. Next to the Nikon, the Fuji produces fine images at least 1 1/2 stops above. Even ISO 3200 can be used for a small print on the Fuji Finepix S100FS, something that the Nikon only manages at ISO 800.	ISO 10000 - 1/50s F3.5