Things had become pretty static in the entry-level SLR market. We'd all got used to 6Mp cameras or 8Mp in the case of Canon and Olympus) and the trend seemed to be towards lower prices rather than higher specs.

And then, in the space of just a few short weeks, we get the Sony Alpha A100 , the Nikon D80 and - just announced - the Canon EOS 400D. Each has ten million pixels, a resolution which looks set to become the new standard for semi-serious digital SLRs.

For the time being, Nikon looks set to carry on with its 6Mp D50, so the D80 slots in above this but below the D200. It replaces the D70s, which was, admittedly, starting to look long in the tooth, not to mention expensive.

And Nikon has judged this pretty well, in that the D80 may not steal many sales from the D200 despite its features. You only have to compare the two cameras in the flesh to see the difference. The D200 is built like a tank, with controls for serious photographers and pros. The D80 is built like the D50 and D70s - chunky but plastic, with amateur-orientated Vari-Program modes up front on the mode dial and more serious photographic options tucked away in menus or accessed via buttons.

The D80 is for amateurs who want to take their photography further; the D200 is aimed at skilled photographers who want hands-on control of features they already understand. This raises another question. Is the D80 sufficiently superior to the D50 to justify a doubling in the price? There are two ways it can do this: by offering superior photographic control or practical benefits, and by providing significantly better image quality.

Those new features

Let's look at the D80's features. The 10Mp CCD is the headline news, but this inevitably brings bigger file sizes which, in turn, places greater demands on the camera's internal processing hardware. Nikon claims that a new processing chip accelerates performance while reducing power consumption, and this appears to be the case. Despite the bigger files, the D80 can still shoot at 3 frames per second practically indefinitely.

Well, almost. It can shoot up to 100 JPEG files in succession at this speed - a little down on the D70s (and the D50) but still a figure few of us are ever likely to exploit.