With a 2000mm equivalent zoom range, the Nikon Coolpix P900 leads the current ultrazoom class in terms of reach. While there's no question that the camera has an impressive zoom range, a nature photographer based in Germany has made it ever-so-obvious just how powerful this little ultrazoom is. His YouTube video of the moon shows that at 83x optical zoom the lens' magnification is so powerful, the rotation of the Earth is easily seen as the subject drifts through the frame.
Pretty impressive for a $600 camera, no? If you're looking to shoot the moon yourself, our 2015 Superzoom Roundup is a good place to start your research.
nikon p900 amazing camera..hard to focus at full digital zoom if no tripod.. crispy clear till 1600mm then start noise till 8000mm so far its a fun toy...
To show the earth's rotation, it would be better to shoot from the moon, or from another point in space. This video actually just shows an effect of the earh's rotation combined with the moon's rotation and its movement in its orbit around the earth.
The moon does rotate once for every orbit around the Earth, which is why we always see the same side. FYI the moons orbital period is 27 days, or 29 1/2 days (synodic period).
Yes CarlosMP, the moon DOES rotate in relation to the earth. Where did you get your education? The earth rotates at the exact speed, in relation to the earth, that it takes it to circle the earth one time. That is why we always see only one side of the moon.
Funny I even complain about headlines sometimes, but I instantly knew what they meant, found it appropriate, and don't find a literary conflict in it. I guess if you've messed around with a hobby telescope etc it seems right to say...and you get the appropriate implied comparison to a telescope.
The optical zoom stops at the 15-second mark in the vid, when (hint) the zoom motor stops. It's all digital after that (starting at 30 seconds).
"His YouTube video of the moon shows that at 83x optical zoom the lens' magnification is so powerful, the rotation of the Earth is easily seen as the subject drifts through the frame."
Coming from a site that specializes in photography, I am surprised. That statement suggests that the moon looks that big (starting at the 30-second mark) using the 83X optical zoom, whereas the videographer used both optical *and* digital.
The video is falsified, it shows recording from the moon, but you can hear wildlife on soundtrack. Everyone knows that space doesn't have air, so the moon wildlife could be heard from the moon to earth.
You can clearly see rotation of the earth in an exposure as low as a 25 seconds with a 24mm lens. It's an annoyance that will cost you considerable cash to remove with various tracking gear if you get into astrophotography. This entire video is a marketing gimmick for ignorant amateurs with too much cash and gear acquisition syndrome.
RAW would be a real nice addition! I have both the 20-1200mm LUMIX FZ70 and 24-600mm LUMIX FZ200, both having RAW format output. It make a BIG difference in image quality over the best JPG quality!
I doubt the P900 will ever have RAW. The P600 did not but they just upgraded it to the B700, 60x and RAW. I look for a P1,000 in a year or so and it will have RAW.
This is an issue with shooting stills of the moon with even a 400mm lens on a crop body (300'ish equivalent), particularly during an eclipse when light is low, if you're not careful; even a 1 sec exposure will yield noticeable motion blur with even a low pixel count camera by modern standards.
Of course, you really need to use manual exposure, and keep in mind that you're photographing an object that's in daylight, so the sunny f/16 rule applies. Add 2 stops because the average albedo of the moon is about 5% (vs. 18% assumed), and it's easy to calculate exposure. If you shoot at f/4 and ISO 100, you get 1/400 shutter speed, which isn't a problem.
"the rotation of the Earth is easily seen as the subject drifts through the frame" - this is a direct consequence of high magnification. Reading the text seems to be something special...it isn't. Anyone who has used a telescope knows that.
Helped by a very clear and stable atmosphere, the Moon surface details are visible. Definitely a nice performance for an ultrazoom, and likely to be expected from similar camera as well. An example with Kodak PIXPRO AZ522 (AKA Pentax XG-1) at night, although without a tripod: www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRdvQARAyV0
While this is a really impressive zoom lens which is able to shoot the moon with absolute clarity. I will stick with my CAnon 6D until I can afford the Canon 5Ds.
What you're forgetting is that they are not comparing this camera to DSLR, it is labeled and classified as a point and shoot. That would be like comparing a flip phone to a smart phone
Here is the moon at 3200mm equivalent with a GH2 and a $30 tripod. Try catching a plane in front of the moon at that focal length. It isn’t very easy especially without a tracking mount.
As a nature photographer, I honestly prefer a 16-600 equivalent lens, with a wide F1.8 or F2.8 wide aperture, F5.6 max at telephoto and A ZOOM RING! You have no idea how much battery that would save and how more precise pictures would be. Don't care abt the small sensor either as long as it has a manageable size. Being weather sealed would also be a plus and USB charging via external power bank and a maximum price of USD600. I would buy it immediately!
Yes... Fuji has been delivering them, but the quality of the lens is not good as well as IQ. Such a pitty as it has everything needed: fast wide lens (24-1000mm @ F2.8/5.6) though it could be wider, zoom ring, RAW recording, 500 shots per charge. However not weather sealed, no time-lapse (nor WiFi and GPS, though I don't care abt those)
Doesn't the moon rotate around the earth? seems like a strange heading for the story. Perhaps, "p900 shows the moon moving across the sky..." Would be more accurate, and probably less exciting (to match the video)
Not actually. rate of earth rotation is 1 round-per-day; while the angular velocity of the moon in its orbit is about 1 round-per-month which is equal to 0.03 round-per-day. Hence, the motion in the image is mainly due to earth rotation and not the moon orbital motion.
The movement you see in the video is due to the earth's rotation (hence the story heading). The moon's rotation around the earth is much less significant (it takes 28 days compared to a little more than one day to come around); and by itself would be hard to discern in such a short video.
@Joesiv The earth moves fast in its rotation at 465.1 meters/sec (or about 1040 miles/hour). I understand it's hard to imagine that we are rotating at the speed of more than 1000 miles per hour!!!
Guys, the earth is still and the universe revolves around it - I just picked the most convenient point of reference, and until the issue of cosmic background radiation anisotropy AKA the axis of evil is resolved with something more than "must be a coincidence", my choice is the most rational.
@Marcello, I hope you have a good story for the very far away stars and galaxies being able to move around us at speed that by far exceeds the speed of light.
Hehe. I see moon drift and earth rotation with humble 800 mm (400mm and 2x extender). And with 600 mm on 2x extender mounted on solid tripod that celestial body races outta the frame like that guy Usain Bolt.
Yeah, Nikon missed it. If you want to see Aliens Fuji would be a better choice. Remember the white orb phenomenon with the first Fuji XS1. Really scary! And that was in 2012.
On the other hand there is no such thing as Aliens! I remember when I saw the moon landing with my grandson. He was exited like a child to share this exiting moment with his old grandfather. He invited us to his house, where he lived since he retired from the army 20 years before. That was a fantastic evening. There were some some therories alien would live amongst us and grow very old, but I do not belive that.
Impressive indeed, though obviously digital zoom is being applied starting at 0:30 in the video. I compared this video to a moon shot I took with the Lumix FZ70 at 1200mm, cropped to simulate what 2400mm would look like and the result resembles the video up to the 0:30 mark. I'm not arguing with the output, which is nothing less then amazing, just with the fact that it's what you see optically with a 2000mm equiv. lens. -eyalg
No! 2000mm on P900 is a 35mm equiv. focal length. The actual focal length is 357 mm.
If you use a 357 mm lens on a FF camera and crop out a 5.6x or 1/31 of the photo from the center, it will give you the size of P900 image. Of course, even if you have a 50Mp camera, it will leave you with less than 2Mp. But that's not as important as it sounds as their surface areas are about the same.
Another reason my telescope is collecting dust in the closet. I remember looking at the moon on the summer nights in 1969 and thinking that for now, it's a virgin moon, and if, God willing, our Astronauts were successful in a few weeks, the moon would forever be changed. I wish NASA could bottle that excitement from that long ago summer, and use it today.
I saw a documentary film that clearly shows that the entire American moon landing was a colossal hoax. The "astronauts" were herded into a well disguised and protected hangar converted into a television stage at the USAF facility in the Palmdale, California desert, and made to do those nifty walks and whatnot on the pre-fab "moon set." The "live" landing was all prerecorded and broadcast from the Earth.
For me the dead giveaways were the American flag and the shadows. Please, these tricks were top-notch indeed in 1969-1973, but are rather dated by today's standards and more critical eyes.
Yes, and of the thousands of people involved in the moon landing at NASA not one has ever let slip the truth. Nor the thousands of people covering it in the media around the world. It would be easier to put someone on the moon than try and create a hoax as big as that AND be able to cover it up which would mean only a handful of people would have to be involved with the truth. Maybe they killed all the people at the secret hangar and all those involved in setting up the set and all those involved in arranging the secret tv feed plus all those in Mission Control that knew they didn't get to the moon. But then they'd have to kill the people that did the killing as they might have found out before they killed the people. Where's my tin foil hat.
"I saw a documentary film that clearly shows that the entire American moon landing was a colossal hoax."
You must have missed the end titles, which gave away that the documentary was a hoax, to show how gullible the hoax thinkers are, rather than those listening to scientists who worked on the projects or those that actually landed on the moon.
Your "dead giveaways" regarding the flag and shadows have been debunked as theories about a thousand times now.
9-11 -- a "hoax?" You said it, not me. Maybe it was the disturbed Moonies who ahd hit the towers, or what R U saying?
Regarding the alleged Moon landing scam, well besides countless books and documentary films exposing the alleged NASA scam, it was even made into a major motion picture back in 1978:
Yes there are UFOs. There are objects that appear to fly that have been spotted and not been identified. It doesn't mean that they are aliens who have come to visit us though. And I'm a strong believer that there must be a lot of intelligent life in the universe given the myriad of suns and worlds. It would be arrogant to think otherwise given there are more suns in the observable universe than grains of sand on every beach in the world. I have my doubts though that they've overcome the laws of physics (as we understand them) and managed to find us and visit us (given the aformentioned myriad of suns) .
Francis: Bet you the Mars rover is a hoax too. That would be easy to do in a studio. Bet you all the satellite orbiting the earth is a hoax too, is all paintings. Bet you all the rockets are hoax too, is all just giant firecrackers. Bet you the Hubble space telescope is a hoax, is just a fake picture. Bet you Large Hadron Collider is a hoax too, they just build this ring underground in Europe that did nothing, and all these data are random numbers. Bet you the A-bomb too is a hoax to scare us. It was just a firework in a fish tank. US already won the war by then. But if I were betting any real money, I'd say you are more of a hoax than anything. hahaha
There are no Aliens! I remember when I saw the moon landing with my grandson. He was exited like a child to share this exiting moment with his old grandfather. He invited us to his house, where he lived since he retired from the army 20 years before. That was a fantastic evening. There were some some therories alien would live amongst us and grow very old, but I do not belive that.
This must be the most off topic thread on DPReview ever :-) Franz, I personally would be shocked if there wasn't abundant intelligent life in the universe given there are trillions of suns out there with worlds circling them just like ours. But I fear we'll never now as the pesky laws of physics will keep as separated like tiny islands on a vast ocean. Unless of course, someone discovers a way to make quantum entanglement work as a means of transport.
Maybe this camera is okay for taking stills at great lengths, however the servo zoom motor on it is noisier than a 12-year old coffee grinder with its bearings on the lam. So you can use this CoolPix for taking stills.... or for taking MOS silent videos... or sound take videos if you are using an external audio field recorder some distance away from the high decibel zoom. Not a deal-breaker for those who jsut must have that large 2000mm reach and than small 1/2-inch class sensor.
I considered Panasonic FZ70 with a 1200 mm focal length, an obnoxious zoom. But this camera with a 2000 mm focal length and a super fast autofocus surpasses it by leaps and bound.
It would take time for another camera to come out with a focal length higher than 2500 mm. There may not be significant difference in the output between 2000 -2250 mm focal length.
The P900 telephoto "reach" is equivalent to a Canon 5DS R with an 1100mm lens, in terms of pixels-on-target resolution. Both of these combinations (the standard P900 zoomed in to the maximum, and the Canon 5DS R fitted with an imaginary 1100mm lens, offers a plate scale of 0.77 arc-seconds/pixel.
Of course, the 5DS R will almost certainly have a better signal/noise ratio, so its overall image quality will likely be better, if one can find that 1100mm lens, but....at what cost? :-)
The telephoto performance shown here is significantly greater than 2000mm "equivalence", for the reason that the 2000mm number is the FOV equivalence only. It has virtually nothing to do with the actual equivalent "reach" of the moon in this scene.
THAT is provided by the COMBINATION of the 357mm lens and the tiny (very dense) photo sites in that small 1/2.3" sensor camera. It's the combination of the extremely dense sensor + that 357mm lens that provides such great effective "reach."
This camera's "reach" would be nowhere near as good as it is, if it had the very large photo sites of any current FF camera. This camera's advantage would be dramatically less if it had even the density of the highest density FF camera made today, the Canon 50 MP camera!
So, when we talk about the amazing telephoto ability of this camera and discuss how cool the moon close-ups are, we should recognize that it's not ONLY the lens, but, just as importantly, that very small, dense, sensor!
What is most impressive is the lack of atmospheric haze and thermal distortion seeing that the Moon was at a very low angle.
Had the Moon been overhead at 90 degrees, the video would likely be more vivid, and faster(?).
People who are planning to get this camera should check with their environmental atmospheric weather in their Cities and weigh the distance versus the visibility of the City VS the Camera. Beijing at high pollution comes to mind. Gyro tripods not included. (Sarcasm...)
I think they have had a number of them. Those cameras, who landed on the moon were left there - afaik. Those on orbital module were taken back, to earth. For some copies propably the only trip was a trip from Sweden to Canaveral. But, You know, they never get there, hence ebay auctions ;)
only aliens could do that. They probably stolen one with other stuff, and checking their cargo on the moon they decided they prefer 135 films over 120 rolls.
The zoom range is impressive. Seeing the earth's rotation is not. Every astrophotographer, ever, has struggled with the problem. Even with a very wide angle lens, only a 1 minute exposure will show star streaks.
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