Nikon’s 3000mm Moon zoom takes pictures out of this world

The Nikon Coolpix P1000 is an insane camera.

Central Station’s clock in a regular photo, and zoomed. Picture: Hollie Adams

The Nikon Coolpix P1000 is an insane camera. It’s insane because any camera with a 3000mm lens takes zooming to madness levels. Mid-range zooms typically are up to 105mm and consumer telephoto zooms might range to 300mm. This is 10 times that.

It means that from across Prince Alfred Park in Sydney’s CBD, I could take a close-up of a city clock face that’s just a dot in the distance of a regular photo.

The P1000 is a step up from the previous P900. It offers an extra 1000mm of zoom, shoots RAW images and 4K video, and has an in-built 3.5mm microphone socket, so you can add a variety of external microphones. It makes this a good camera for videographers.

The P1000 is in a category of cameras with fixed lenses. You can’t swap them so the camera and its fixed lens are a one-stop shop. To accommodate this limitation, and to give you variety in the shots you take, Nikon’s built-in lens offers an amazing zoom range. It extends from close-ups at 24mm, which is in the ultrawide category, to 3000mm telephoto.

The big question is whether this 3000mm zoom is of good quality. In my experience, it proved to be outstanding for its price, at least in reasonable light.

This makes the camera a good option for lots of situations. You could be a traveller who doesn’t want to be burdened with multiple lenses. Indeed, not carrying around a separate zoom is a great bonus. And it’s fast enough for taking close-up shots of your kids playing sport on the weekend.

The Nikon Coolpix P1000. Photo: Hollie Adams

The P1000 offers special support for two particular zoom scenarios: birdwatching and photographing the moon. Both modes display the image in a square to help with composition. Both have a predefined focal length, and with the press of a button, the camera automatically zooms to that focal length.

You preset the focal length from a range of choices. In the case of birdwatching, they range from 500mm to 3000mm. For the moon, it’s 1000mm to 3000mm. The moon mode also has an automatic three-second countdown timer to eliminate camera shake when the P1000 is mounted on a tripod. Moon mode also offers a choice of colour temperature settings.

Note it is a moon-specific setting and is unsuitable for Mars and other celestial bodies.

They are too far away to offer the same ­detail.

It’s easy to lose sight of the object you want to snap when you engage high-powered zooming. The camera addresses this with a snapback zoom button. It zooms right out and then slowly zooms in again so you can manually rediscover your chosen image and have it centred.

Fixed lens cameras specialising in big zoom often are not suited to close-up photography.

A test shot with Nikon’s Coolpix P1000. Picture: Hollie Adams

However, the P1000 proves itself versatile, taking macro images of objects just a centimetre away. I tried this taking close-ups of some flowers with good results.

The P1000 is a big camera so you’ll need to make room for it in your backpack, but it’s lightweight and shouldn’t be a burden to carry when you’re out and about. You could just decide to carry it around your neck.

You can transfer images to a smartphone using the Nikon Snapbridge app and share them on social media.

Photos can be downsized to 2MB for transmission.

The Coolpix P1000 will set you back $1599.