How can you tell if a nikon D80 camera is real or fake?

Question

How can you tell if a nikon D80 camera is real or fake?

Answer 1

Buy it from a shop, or a trusted site

Answer 2

Eeeee... you'll have to elaborate on your question.

Do you have the camera in your hands and you're not sure? Is someone offering it to you at great price that sounds too good to be true? You are looking for a used one on eBay?

Anyway - here's one thing. Ask someone to take a picture of that camera in a mirror (so that the camera both used to take it and is in a frame) and send it over to you. Then look at EXIF data. It should say there that picture was taken with Nikon D80. Also have the person send you a picture of camera with serial number clearly visible (probably not self-taken, because it'll need two mirrors and some tricky setup). Then call Nikon and confirm that the number is genuine, and it's for D80 camera made for US market....

All of that can be faked of course. They can send you real camera info but then give a different camera, etc.... If you have a camera in hands though, checking the EXIF data and serial number should usually do the trick - unless you got it from very sophisticated crook, who actually bothered to re-program the camera's firmware to show D80 and to put a different serial number on it. That's VERY unlikely.

LEM.