When Nikon announced the new 24-2000mm equivalent Coolpix P900 it took the world of superzooms and put it into hyperzoom. Or is that hype-zoom? I’ll have the comprehensive review of this intriguing camera done soon, but to whet your appetite until then, wrap your mind around these shots of Grand Canyon’s Desert View Watchtower all taken from the same spot at Lipan Point, 1.8 miles away.
The Watchtower is the very tiny structure in the upper right. Let’s zoom in.
The shots from 24mm to 2000mm equivalent are with the optical zoom. The shot at 4000mm equivalent is with the camera’s digital zoom enabled.
We’ll dig into the P900’s outlandish zoom range and other features like the pre-shooting cache (records images before you fully depress the shutter release) and focus peaking that might soon become standard on the next generation of cameras. Most importantly, I’ll answer the question “should you sell your D4s and buy ten P900’s?” Stay tuned.
Thanks for the comparison pictures. This was really helpful.
I have a Nikon D800, D600, and CoolPix P900. I am going to take the Nikon D800 with a 80 to 400mm lens and a 1.4 teleconverter to Africa. I want to take another camera and was considering whether I should take the D600 with a lens for landscapes or the CoolPix P900 so that I could zoom in farther than the D800. If I took a photo of a lion that was farther away than I wanted the final image to be, I could crop the image during post production. With 36megapixels, it could be cropped a bit before its resolution began to be lowered to be equivalent of the P900 at only 16mp. But I was wondering at what point the image would become worse looking than the P900’s 16 megapixels. Also, the quality of sensor and lens would make a difference. At a 2000mm zoom capability, I could possibly zoom in far enough to require no cropping at all with the P900. Do you have any information to help me with this question? My safari begins in a little over a month.
I am confused. Why, like the Coolpix 900, is it possible to buy a camera fopr less than $600 is it not possible to create a lenses that we can use on SLR Nikons without spending a fortune for that extra lens. Yes, it’s probably not that clear, but st ill —- why not????????
Verm, what’s the MSRP for this camera?
I managed to get my P900 unit yesterday. I went to the highlands today to do some follow up bird work & decided to test it on an impossible situation – a hard to reach nesting bird. Remember to the naked eye this bird was not visible, just a tiny speck on a tree far in the distance.
1. The first image comparison is at full zoom for both my old setup (Nikon D7100 SLR with Tamron SP 150-600mm) & the new one. No cropping of images.
2. The second comparison is at full zoom for both my old set up & the new one but my old set up image was cropped (often have to do this with bird images).
A video of the bird with my new set up: youtu.be/mrTyBDy4LrI (bear in mind my first day with camera, barely read
manual, so bit of focus issues).
I think a great camera for distant, hard to reach wildlife video. Can rival digiscoping.
Just had time to read this post. Looks wonderful for bird photography, especially video recording. I wonder how much shake you get at say 1000mm equivalent handheld (even possible?).
No, no no no no …. this is going the wrong way :) Just get closer! This is me parodying myself re wildlife photography.
Seriously, this looks really interesting.
My p900 just arrived. Can’t wait to try it out at todays wedding
It’s amazing. No, it’s not a great image, but good lord what a zoom. I demand an equivalent lens for APS-C sensors!
Do you have a large truck to carry it? The key to such a wild optical design is that the image circle it needs to cover (to cover the sensor) is very small. Hence the lens can be a reasonable size. I doubt you’ll ever see such a lens for APS-C but what would be intriguing is if someone would make a compact 600mm f/5 for crop sensor cameras. All the prime supertelephotos are FX format and massive as a result. But as sensor technology improves (see my upcoming D7200 review) DX quality is getting better and better. Lighter, cheaper supertelephoto primes for DX could really shake up the wildlife photography world.
Thanks Verm, but I was kidding. I’m a huge fan of Lensrentals.com and I remember this – wordpress.lensrentals.com/blog/…ou-wanted/
What a monster of a lens!
I like your image comparison in your “review” between the D810 + 800 f5.6 + 1.4x versus the P900. I think I’d rather have the $21k myself.
impressive! but of course only with good light…
maybe someday 1 inch sensors will reach this heights with future technology…starting with the fz1000