Something different

This is my fifth digital camera. It's a great companion for the P712 that I've had for about a year. Between the two of them, I've got 24-432mm covered, 605 if you include the 1.4 teleconverter. I've never had that sort of versatility. Specifically to the P880, I have to say that the 24mm is a luxury that I quickly was spoiled by. I never had anything wider than 28 for 35mm and my digitals stopped at about 32. It doesn't sound like much difference, but it's night and day. 24mm is seriously wide. It provides some dramatic effect. The lens itself does have a little distortion at that setting, but it might be considered a side effect of that wide angle view as much as a lens fault. The lens is sharp and has little chromatic aberration. It's reasonably fast, too. I really like the manual zoom ring. I would expect to see more of those. AF is acceptably fast. Manual focus is better implemented than in most cameras, but still isn't great. In the widest angle setting, then it can do some fantastic macros.

Most people would be pleased with its exposure. It does a good job with automatic in most modes right down to fairly slow speeds. Like most digitals I've used, it doesn't allow the lens to stop down lower than f8. I don't understand that limitation. The depth of field of f16 would sometimes be nice. I'm happy with the shutter speed selection. It can do automatic exposure bracketing when you aren't sure, and that works well.

It will take time-lapse pictures and has a burst mode, neither can be used with long exposures. The P712 has auto-stitch panorama built in, which would be nice with the 24mm lens but the P880 doesn't have it.

The color is excellent. The noise level is quite acceptable, even on 400 ISO. The pictures at 50 ISO have very smooth color.

The dedicated flash is an excellent addition. The standard flash is acceptable for close-up, but the bounce and fill with the P20 add-on is worth getting. It's a little expensive, but it might be getting better now that the line is discontinued.

There is a common problem with the power switches of this model. Mine was corrected with some contact cleaner. However, it raises some questions about the durability in the long-term. I'm not worried, as it's likely to last at least until clearly superior equipment will be appealingly priced.

Overall, this is a very nice camera. It's still worth looking for, as lightly used models would not be expensive. It's big and a little heavy, and doesn't have the long zoom range that some would expect. It's wide-angle view and excellent image quality make up for that.