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.

The battery life is pretty good, too. Nikon has a habit of quoting two figures: one based on continuous shooting in a very specific set of conditions and another based on what appears to be a more reasonable simulation of what most of us do. The battery life figures quoted are 2,700 shots and 600 shots respectively. Even if you get 600 shots on a single charge, you've not got much to complain about.

What's more, the battery charge indicator on the status panel is backed up by some careful battery charge measurements within the camera. When the charge icon moves off maximum, it doesn't mean (as it does with most cameras) that the D80 is about to drop dead at any second. In fact, the charge indicator has several segments which do a pretty good job of mirroring the battery's true state. And if you're not convinced, you can dip into the menus to check the battery's charge level as a percentage, and also the number of charge cycles it's been through (and hence whether you need to replace it at some point).