But you can’t hide.

1/640 f4.5 320mm Nikon p1000.   02/20/2020 at 02:20 p.m.

Well, maybe you can hide a little bit.

I kinda hate this camera.  I bought it for its long reach.  It extends to 539mm, but with a 1.66 sensor (7.7 diagonal) it calculates to a whopping 3000mm on a full frame!  What nature photographer doesn’t like that!!!

Unfortunately, what Nikon fails to tell you in the small print is this:  The camera is significantly front-heavy at full extension.  That means that even on a tripod it tends to dip a bit. . .so much so that the camera shakes to the point that it misses the target.  At best the results are soft images.   Really soft.

And since the focus points are contrast-only, don’t even try to take a photo of a mostly brown eagle sitting in its fairly brown nest on an 18% gray day.   With full extension, the results you get could be captioned, “Guess what I took a picture of today.  No, really, you have to guess.”  Because by looking at the brown blob in the middle of a drab sky, it’s anybody’s guess as to what it really is.

But as you can see, at mid extension the camera performs quite well, even when taking a chance photo with one hand through a (dirty) car window.  While driving! Which is why I’ve gone ahead and ordered a few things from B and H, to see if I can somehow stabilize the p1000 at full extension and get the awesome photos that Nikon tells me I can.

More later, once the B&H package arrives and I’ve had a chance to play with the toys.

P.S.  Isn’t today’s date a dyslexic’s nightmare???