A quick test of Nikon’s new CoolPix P1000 Superzoom

Sonya has been getting into graphic design lately and a by-product of that is picking up a bit of Photoshop skills. That has also lead to an interest in photography and image quality beyond what her current iPhone 8+ is capable of providing. She wanted to get a semi-professional camera but something that wouldn’t require a set of lenses—or any lenses at all for that matter. She wanted a camera that could serve as a travel camera, a creative portrait camera, and a host of other creative modes.  We settled on the new Nikon CoolPix P1000. It has all of the feature items she wanted though it is a bit hefty in the hands and the superzoom aspect is far beyond anything she was looking for—a whopping 24mm to 3,000mm, f/2.8-8.0. However, she will now be using it for her school’s sporting events, an added bonus.

It’s HUGE!

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The above two photos contrast the size of the P1000 with my Nikon D90 DSLR + Tamron 18-270mm lens. As I said, the P1000 is a hefty beast. Overall, it is about as light as the D90 and fits well in the hand. the T/W zoom controls on the right thumb-rest is repeated on the left side of the lens, such that by propping up the lens with the left hand, the left thumb can also smoothly control the zoom action. There is also a button to quickly unzoom half way out for quickly finding subjects. Very cleverly laid out. Below is the comparison of the 24mm, unzoomed state to the full 3,000mm zoomed state.

Hand-held Testing

The purpose of this quick note is not a full-on review. That has been much better done over at DPReview.com. What follows are my initial quick tests with full zoom on a sunny day in mid and late afternoon, just before sunset.

I start with a cactus with some dried blossoms in the arroyo in the front of our property with a basic framed shot versus a tighter, zoom shot.

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Full Zoom Tests

For a full zoom test, I took a series of shots from our front porch looking towards two properties over, perhaps 600 yards away. The small blue spec in the center of the first shot is the number plate for the home address. The yellow outline in the center of each of the first three images is roughly the frame outline for the next image in the series. I was using auto-focus for all these images and messed up the third image, where the focus was fixed on the coyote fencing on the edge of our property instead of the distant number plate.

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And finally one more full zoom test of a truck sitting in front of a property at the end of the street, perhaps 1,000 yards away.

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Initial Conclusion

On the whole, I’m impressed. Bear in mind that these are all hand-held shots. Even with the built-in image stabilization (up to 5-stops) they could be improved with the use of a monopod or even a tripod. Any serious work beyond 400mm zoom typically demands as such.

We’ll evaluate this over the next few weeks before deciding if it truly meets her needs. There are a host of features to explore: High ISO settings for evening/night photography, manual focus and exposure controls, etc; just as with any DSLR.

Not all is well…

Already there are some issues I am not happy with. The battery is underpowered and good for only 250 shots before needing to be recharged. There is no external charger supplied with the camera so it is charged in place. The external charger is a $20 item that should have been included with the camera. We would definitely need to purchase an extra battery or two as well as the external charger if we keep this camera.

The image sensor is puny by modern standards. Superzooms on the market today have 1″ size sensors capable of 20MP or more. Nikon went with their 1/2.3″ (6.17mm x 4.55mm) sensor for this camera. This is how the lens achieves its effective 24mm-3000mm zoom range. At 16MP it offers higher resolution (4608 x 3456) than my decade old Nikon D90 (4288 x 2848) but the latter has a much larger 23.6mm x 15.8mm sensor. Cramming more pixels onto the smaller image sensor comes at the expense of more noise.  By comparison, the Sony Cybershot RX10 iv has a larger 1″ sensor offering a resolution of 20.2MP (5472 x 3648) with much better low-light performance. The zoom on that camera (24mm-600mm) may have us considering it in place of the P1000.

I’ll keep you posted.