Nikon stretches Coolpix focal-range beyond belief
Za za zoom
Nikon clicked into focus today with the launch of the Coolpix P510, a bridge camera that boasts a whopping 42x optical zoom.
The Nikon Coolpix P510 takes the zoom crown off its younger P500 sibling, thanks to a wide-angle Nikkor lens with a stalker-friendly 35mm equivalent of 24mm-1000mm.
This joins hands with a 16.1Mp backside illuminated Cmos sensor, while a tiltable 3in LCD screen shows off results in 921,000-dot resolution.
There's also 1080p video recording with stereo sound, a built-in HDMI connector and GPS capabilities for the forgetful traveller.
The Nikon Coolpix P510 comes in three colours - black, red and dark grey - and hits shelves on 22 March for £400. ®
COMMENTS
Plato?
Not sure exactly what you're trying to get at. It would probably be wrong of me to point out that the Camera Obscura was invented in Greek times (not exactly a "modern" camera, as you put it). But I'll match your quote with a contradicting one:
"when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be." -- Lord Kelvin
35mm equivalent of 24mm-1000mm.
Made Possible by using the smallest sensor known to man.. it might be 16MP but it'll have the smallest pixels ever.. with no light gathering capacity and be totally rubbish in low light....
No thanks.
Hazy shade of gray
Nikon omits the aperture from their product specifications but "1:3-5.9" is on the barrel in their product views. I have lens that's f/5.6 at 300mm and I don't think this will work. f/5.9 isn't going to produce much sensor illumination for anything that isn't in unfiltered sunlight. The sensor will be running at maximum ISO and that won't produce a clear enough image to compensate for the large amounts of atmospheric haze to be expected at such a high zoom level.
Thermals
At full zoom, even on a tripod, with the sensor size and optical/digital image stabilisation picture quality will suffer due to thermals. At 42x zoom, any heat source between you and your subject will likely result in the same type of visual effect as rain on your windows.
Has zoom taken over from megapixels in the marketing toolkit?
