Let me get right to the point. The Nikon Coolpix P900 is an outstanding camera. It tickles off all the right boxes and should be on your list if you want a Camera that is a great point and shoot camera with a bunch of extra features. Before I get to those features, let me show you the camera:
As you can see, it’s not a small camera as most of the size is occupied by the 24-2000 mm lens.
The Coolpix P900 is a 16 megapixel camera that comes with the following:
- 83x (2000mm equivalent) optical zoom lens.
- Built in flash.
- 7fps burst rate at full resolution, 60fps and 120fps burst rates at lower resolution
- Electronic View Finder with eye control
- 5-stop Vibration Reduction
- 18 scene modes including timelapse, bird-watching, easy panorama and moon shot. There’s also a manual control if you want to do your own thing.
- Wi-Fi, GPS and NFC are included so you can view and transfer photos and video clips to your smartphone or tablet, or even use another device to remotely control the camera. GPS is also built in for geotagging shots and finding points of interest you might want pictures of when traveling. The GPS was quick to gain a signal and was able to maintain the signal throughout my testing. However, battery life was drained quickly with GPS logging turned on. That was kind of annoying.
- Full HD video at 60 frames per second as well as 30fps. 720p resolution is also available at 60p/30p as is a neat slow-motion video mode that captures at up 120 frames per second at VGA (640 x 480) resolution.
- For storage, the P900 uses Secure Digital flash memory cards and is compatible with SD, SDHC and SDXC cards.
- It uses a Lithium ion battery pack. You should buy two or three if you want to use the GPS function on this camera.
It all comes together nicely to give you a camera that is great for any situation. It is heavy, but it is easy to hold. Though I wish that it had a bit more on the left hand side to hold. Two things that I like about the design of the camera are the fact that it has two ways to zoom in and out (one on the shutter and one on the lens), as well as a separate control to record video. Clever.
But the real question is this: How well does it take pictures? To answer that, here are some pictures taken at various zoom levels outside my favorite place to test cameras which is Pearson Airport in Toronto. Click to see them at full size:
One thing I really liked was the fact that the Coolpix P900 was quick to cycle after taking pictures. That makes it great for action shots.
As for video, Here’s a couple of videos shot at 1080p. Set the video to full screen and 1080p to see it in full resolution:
The video is outstanding from a quality perspective and I will note that while the built in microphone could be overwhelmed by wind, it did pick up the surrounding noise very well. Everything from birds to my car stereo was recorded.
The Nikon Coolpix P900 has a MSRP of $670 Canadian. Other than the fact that the GPS function drains the battery, there’s not much that I didn’t like about this camera. Take a good look at it if you are in the market for a very capable point and shoot camera.