Having Fun With New Nikon P900

[Lin Evans]

Will be posting some images soon! The P900 is a poor man's treasure. Optical zoom from 24mm to 2000mm with digital zoom to 8000mm. It's actually possible to hand hold at 2000mm and get decent results. I just received the camera and took first images yesterday but so far it's an extremely impressive camera with a lens to die for. Absolutely zero chromatic aberrations at any zoom. Only jpg, no RAW but gives one the opportunity to get shots which would, if coupled with Nikon's own equipment, cost over $20,000 to duplicate with only marginally better results. A Nikon 800mm lens with built in 1.25x teleconverter, plus a Nikon 1.4x teleconverter and a D810 would set one back over $21,000. That would give one 1344 mm optical, which when cropped and enlarged is only slightly better than the 2000mm native on the P900. The really big thing is that you can carry the camera and have an incredible range of 83x zoom. It's slightly smaller and lighter than my D7200 with an 18-105mm attached.

Of course one could substitute the D7200 for the D810 and get optical zoom to @2000mm with this combination and that indeed would be superior but could not be hand-held and would require a really solid tripod. The cost would be about $1600 less than with the D810 and it would be possible to substitute the very good Sigma 300-800 f/5.6 for the Nikon prime with about equal quality and save around $9500 but it would still be an over $10,000 investment. Then one would need another $1000 in terms of tripod and head plus the difficulty of toting this weight and bulk and the set-up time which would undoubtedly result in many missed wildlife opportunities since wildlife is unlikely to continue to "pose" while the photographer sets up the tripod, mounts the lens and camera and focuses.

Here's a link which shows some of the results in a review of this jewel. Worth every penny of the $600 investment IMHO.

http://photographylife.com/reviews/nikon-coolpix-p900

And below some size comparisons with my D7200 with an attached 18-105 mm ...

Lin

[Lin Evans]

Little bunny hiding in my lawn this evening - snapped this 800mm frame out my car window as I was leaving for an appointment. I'm really liking this verastile camera....

Lin

[JudyKay]

Good Grief. I want one of those! I love candid people pictures but am too bashful about getting in people's faces. My 70-200 2.8 feels and looks like a full sized ship cannon on the street. That bunny picture sells me! Now i just need to save a few thousand pennies.

[Lin Evans]

Just a recent demo of what really long zoom does - these five images taken at variously aproximately 33, 70, 200, 450, 1200 and 2400 mm focal lengths. All hand held so not intended as examples of good photography but rather just to demonstrate the huge zoom potential of the P900...

[michaelr108]

Hi Lin

Whow.That is a camera . What I would give for a camera like that thank you for the dream , I will look forward to see more of your photos from this beautiful machine .

Mike

[Lin Evans]

Hi Mike,

Nikon has really set the bar for long zoom with this one. With optical zoom to 2000mm and very useable digital zoom to 4,000mm and even able to digitally zoom to 8,000mm it's got some pretty amazing flexibility. Of course the image quality isn't as good as a serious dSLR with expensive glass, but it's good enough for getting shots otherwise impossible in a practical way. I'm having lots of fun with it...

Best regards,

Lin

[wideangle]

Really impressed with the fantastic zoom to get the pics you would otherwise have missed.

It's just disappointing that Nikon couldn't have gone the extra mile to include Raw support.

However,it's usually predictable from manufacturers that the next upgrade will include Raw - that's how they keep the sales going!

Regards

wideangle

[Lin Evans]

Yes - that's one of the things which might have made image quality a little better, but truthfully, on my Canon SX50 HS which has RAW support I rarely if ever use it because I just don't see much difference in the IQ. On my Nikon APS C dSLR's (D7000, D5300, D7200) there is a substantial difference but on these tiny sensor cameras in my experience the improvement is marginal.

The overall capability for the P900 though is outstanding. My main reason for getting it was that I seem to never have the right combination of lens and camera body with me when opportunistic moments for those special shots happen. As I get older, carrying my Sigma 300-800 and huge tripod has become a real task in the high country. I've considered getting a Sigma 150-600 OS which would be much lighter but the little (relatively) all-in-one P900 sure has its advantages.

You're right though - adding those few extra feature for a next iteration might be the way to continue to draw new users but Nikon was sure not ready for the demand for this camera. They still haven't gotten production ramped to meed the demand. As a manufacturer, they are probably quite happy with the response to the P900...

Best regards,

Lin

[davegee]

Great demo Lin!

I have been looking at a similar approach with the new D7200 and 70-300 Lens at 300mm.

First image full frame (6000x4000) resized. Second image - a 1620x1080 actual pixels crop. I don't know what the effective focal length is - perhaps someone will work it out

DG

[Lin Evans]

Hi Dave,

Congrats on the new D7200 - Great camera in my experience - hard to say on the crop but there is sufficient resolution to do the equivalent of some pretty good digital zoom...

Best regards,

Lin

[davegee]

Imagine what can be achieved with a 36Mp or a 50MP Sensor in a DX Camera?

DG