So here is Nikon's P950 the upgrade from their ever-popular P900. What's it
got inside it? Well it's got a 16 megapixel back illuminated CMOS sensor
and an Expeed processor, but what is it that makes these cameras just so
special? This!
landed it. This amazing machine has got am 83 times optical zoom that's the
equivalent of a 24 to 2000 mil zoom lens. it's also got an ED element to prevent
distortion when zooming in and an optical image stabilizer, and it's all
packaged in this neat little body. So who is it aimed at?
Well, wildlife photographers love this camera. People who shoot the moon
particularly love this camera. That's a crackin' moon. Actually people who shoot
anything in the sky love this camera but what else can it do? Today I'm going to
take it through its paces and find out just what we can do with the P950.
So I wanted to try out the autofocus system on the P950 to see how
quickly it will focus when using the zoom. Now what's better to try it on than
squirrels? Because they're quite jittery they do tend to be harder to focus
on. So I have a squirrel in front of me in the dappled sunshine by the tree so
I'm zooming in on it now and using the image stabaliser, I also have a squirrel
that's very close to me, two squirrels not that one I'm photographing a difference squirrel
that's very far away and using the zoom I'm able to zoom right in to see his
little face. As well as using that specific autofocus which is very
reactive and allowing me to snap these pictures perfectly when they strike a
little pose.
The nice thing about using the P950 above perhaps some of the other bridge
cameras I've encountered is that the new optical image stabiliser in there the
950 is just keeping me steady no matter what I'm being able to manipulate the
zoom with my thumb on the left of the lens which gives me a stability with the
way I'm holding the camera anyway. When I pair that with the image stabilisation
it's really making a difference and allowing me to steady the shot, ahh to get
photos of a little squirrel friends. So even at full zoom the new stabilizer in
here is absolutely amazing, because when I'm using the full zoom it's allowing me
to really steady my shot we also did a little bit of footage of the squirrels
and even at 2000 mill handheld I was able to just follow the squirrel as it's
moving because that image stabilizer was so quick and so reactive so really
impressed with it particularly for video as well.
see that is why I love this camera it just gave me so much detail in the
Unicorn on this building behind me that I just wouldn't have seen any other way
unless a helicopter took me up there for me to have a look there's no way I would
have seen it. So it just goes to show that it's not just for wildlife
photography, bird photography the moon. It can be used in all kinds of scenarios. If
you're on a city break and you want to zoom in on the top of a church or if you
want to see some brickwork detail it's perfect for that. If you're out at the
beach with the family and you want to zoom in on the kids that are playing in
the surf it's perfect for that. It will literally do so many different
types of photography it's incredible.
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probably the biggest upgrade of the 950 over the 900 is the video functionality.
So the camera now has a microphone input it will record 4k at 30P and 1080 at 60P
so I've just put the camera into bird-watching mode which is a specific
mode for bird photography. Which of course the P950 is perfect for. What
this will allow me to do is change a bunch of options so that I can get the
most out of my bird photography. The first of which is a focal length
selector so when I press the ok button I can deliberately zoom in or indeed out
to a length of my choice. The second thing is whether I take singular
pictures or do a continuous burst and the third one is the size of my AF area,
because for bigger birds you'd want a larger area and for the smaller birds
you might want a smaller area. So what I'm going to do is take some pictures of
some of the birds we've got on the harbor here and see how this works out
for me.
So I'm really noticing a difference when using the viewfinder in the nine fifty
compared to the nine hundred and that's because the resolution of the viewfinder
is now over doubled that of the nine hundred with the two thousand three
hundred and fifty nine thousand dot LED. On top of that they've increased the
size of the screen to a three point two inch LCD screen which makes looking at
my pictures back that much easier. It's got this wonderful little wheel on the
side which will allow me to change my exposure compensation when photographing
or if I've got it in manual focus it will allow me to manually focus there
too. Of course we've still got the zoom on
the side using the thumb so you can really get a grip of the camera to keep
yourself steady and you've got the instant zoom in/out button which has
always been a hit on the P900, P950 series so the Nikon P900 and the
p1000 cameras were notorious for just how good they were at capturing pictures
of the moon. The P950 is no exception to this I've just zoomed in all the way to
2,000 mil and was able to get a photograph handheld of the moon
including all the craters and the detail. What I'm going to do next is pop it on a
tripod and try it again. Just to see how much clearer I can get
it when I've got that extra little bit of stability. So I've put the camera in
its dedicated moon mode for this next shot and what that means is that the
focusing gets switched to infinity so everything past a certain point is then
pin
sharp. It also adds a three-second self timer because when you press the
shutter button you don't want that wobble that you get from instantly
pressing it to interrupt your photo so that just gives you a couple of seconds
to get the picture that you want. It also has that lovely ok button option that
bird mode had so when you press the ok button it will instantly zoom in to a
focal length of your choice. I've chosen a thousand mil for this one because I
know the moon's going to be very far away and it will just instantly zoom in
at that level. So if I press that now this tiny speck on the screen is
gonna get much bigger. there it is. So what I'm gonna do is, as you can see the exposure
is all completed by the camera so then it saves you faffing saves you having to
worry about what you would do in manual mode because it does everything for you.
What I would suggest actually is that this this moon is it kind of bright, it
confuses all cameras. The moon is a nightmare for that so if I just hit this
lovely little wheel that I was talking about earlier about the exposure
compensation and drop it down just one stop when I take another now...all that
detail comes back in. All the detail on the craters and it just gets rid of some
of that brightness that you get notoriously when you photograph the moon.
So actually really impressed in fact let's let's zoom in touch more let's go...so what are we at?
oh yeah. Let's go to 12, 2000mm yeah.
haha it makes it so easy to get great pictures of the moon I'm actually very
impressed
Safe to say that the P950 really does pack a punch when it comes to zoom but
it's also really good as your everyday camera too if you want to get your hands
on one then why not pop into one of your local Jessup store or visit us at
Jessops.com
I hope you've enjoyed this video and I'll see you again soon.