Bridge camera with an insane zoom lens: Nikon Coolpix P1000 review

Back in 2015, I reviewed a Nikon camera called the Coolpix P900, which is a “bridge camera”. I wasn’t familiar with the term then, but I am now. A bridge camera is a bridge between a point-and-shoot camera and a DSLR, or digital single-lens reflex camera.

I thought then the P900 was a pretty darn good camera with a lens that had an 83x optical zoom, or the equivalent of a 24mm to 2,000mm lens on a 35mm camera. My bottom-line thought on the P900 was that it was all the camera most of us would ever need.

I guess Nikon thought I was wrong, because I’ve been testing the new Nikon Coolpix P1000 (HK$9,280 / US$999 on the company’s website), and it’s bigger and better than the P900 in almost every way possible. The P1000 is like the P900 on steroids. It’s physically bigger and heavier, and the built-in lens has an insane zoom range of 125x (24mm to 3,000mm).

I’ll go ahead and say it: nobody really needs a zoom lens that goes out to 3,000mm, but it sure is fun to see what it can do. You could not buy a 3,000mm lens for your DSLR if you wanted to, but that did not stop Nikon from putting one on the P1000. I admire Nikon for creating such a beast of a camera.

The first thing I noticed is how heavy it is. As you extend the zoom lens, the camera’s weight shifts forward. Holding the P1000 with the lens fully extended is difficult but not impossible, especially with the camera’s built-in image stabilisation.