Episode #4 of my Super Zoom Variety Series is now available on YouTube! There are TEN new super zoom tests in this episode. Episode #4 includes video clips and pictures from San Diego, California, and from Phoenix Arizona. For those who are far away, these are cities in the United States.

I've been shooting with the Nikon COOLPIX P1000 super zoom camera for over five years and I'm always amazed by what it can do. The P1000 has an optical zoom range that starts at 24mm and goes all the way up to 3000mm! That's a magnification of 125x so these test zooms can be... amazing!

Here's the full list of super zooms that you'll see in this Episode #4:

1. A House in an Odd Location
2. A Tall Roller Coaster
3. A Great Egret
4. A Plane on an Aircraft Carrier
5. An Air Traffic Control Tower
6. A Partial Lunar Eclipse
7. A Boat in the Bay
8. Highway Traffic from High Up
9. An Airbus A330
10. Fruit on a Cactus

This article is a good companion to the full episode because I can provide some additional information about the super zooms, the photo shoot location and the camera. Another nice thing about reading the article is that you can click on most of the pictures to see them at their full size.

A HOUSE IN AN ODD LOCATION

Check out this house in the picture below. Why are we zoomed in on a house? Because it's on top of a super tall building! This "house" is actually the penthouse on top of the Park Place building in downtown San Diego, CA. The Park Place building has 30 stories (levels), so this house is about 300 feet, or over 90 meters, off the ground! I had to use a focal length of 2000mm in order to fill the frame with the house.

Click to see a full-size picture

I needed the extra reach of 2000mm because I took the picture at Bayview Park, which is on the other side of San Diego Bay. This park is a small section of land on Coronado Island that has been set aside for the public to get a magnificent view of downtown San Diego. It's an excellent place for photography and I highly recommend it if you want to get some great shots of the city. You'll also be able to see the civilian and military ships that navigate the bay.

The following picture was taken from the exact same spot where the 2000mm picture was taken. The red arrow points to the "house" on top of the Park Place building. At a wide-angle focal length of 24mm, this picture also shows the great view you get when you're at Bayview Park.

Click to see a full-size picture

One thing to keep in mind about Bayview Park is that there is no dedicated parking. You'll have to parallel park along the road. I was there in the morning on a weekday and had no problem finding a nearby place to park, but I would think that weekends and holidays might be a different story.

ROLLER COASTER

If you want to take some pictures and video of the roller coasters at SeaWorld, but don't want to go to the park for the day, then you might want to take your super zoom camera to the southern area of Fiesta Island. Just a narrow section of Mission Bay separates Fiesta Island from SeaWorld, but you'll still need a telephoto lens for your camera.

Here are some pictures of SeaWorld's Electric Eel roller coaster at a few different focal lengths.

Click to see a full-size picture

Both the Electric Eel roller coaster and the Emperor roller coaster are about 2,400 feet (732 meters) away from the road on Fiesta Island that is closest to the theme park. You can just pull over on the wide sandy area next to the road and setup your tripod or lean against your vehicle for stability.

Click to see a full-size picture

You can clearly see the roller coaster structure at a focal length of 200mm, but at almost a half mile away (over three quarters of a kilometer), I'd say that you'll need a focal length of about 400mm to get a close view of the structure. And you'll need much more than that to get a shot of the roller coaster train and the people in it. I used a focal length of 3000mm (see the first picture in this section) to frame the roller coaster train with people.

Click to see a full-size picture

The pictures shown above were taken in the late morning when the Sun in late October was to my left and slightly behind me. Later in the day, the Sun would be behind the roller coaster which would tend to make it look like a silhouette against the sky due to the backlighting.

While I was there in the morning, it occurred to me that a silhouette of the roller coaster at sunset from this position might make for a glorious golden sky picture. So, I returned to Fiesta Island as the Sun was setting and waited for a train full of people to come roaring up the track... and I waited... and I waited... But as the golden sky turned dark, there were no more trains on the roller coaster track.

Click to see a full-size picture

The title of my sunset picture is "Nice, But Where are the People?" :)  It's the photographer's story that's equivalent to the fisherman describing "the one that got away". By the way, the shot above is straight out of the camera, using the Sunset scene mode.

AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL TOWER

The air traffic control tower at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, AZ is about 326 feet (99 meters) tall, which makes it the 11^th tallest control tower in the US. That's according to the List of Tallest Control Towers on Wikipedia.

By the way, various sources on the internet provide different answer to how tall the tower is. The sources that I've looked at range from 300 feet (91 meters) to 326 feet (99 meters). For my Episode #4 video, I referred to the lower height of the tower. So, I'm not 100% sure how tall the tower is.

Click to see a full-size picture

I took this picture from the site of Governor Hunt's Tomb in Papago Park. From here, the tower is three and three-quarter miles, or just over six kilometers, away. At 24mm, it's hard to see the tower, so I drew an arrow and a circle on the picture to show its location.

For folks that don't have much experience taking close-up pictures of things that are far away, I should mention that the 3000mm picture below is actually pretty sharp. What looks like blurriness is actually heat waves moving through the atmosphere. That's called atmospheric turbulence. And there is a lot of atmosphere to look through when the subject of the picture is three and three-quarter miles, or just over six kilometers, away.

Click to see a full-size picture

LUNAR ECLIPSE

On September 17, 2024, there was a partial eclipse of the Moon, AKA a lunar eclipse. That's when the Earth is between the Sun and the Moon and the Earth casts a shadow on the Moon's surface.

According to the NASA website, about 8% of the Moon's visible surface was covered by earth's direct shadow on that night. That's the completely dark area at the top of the Moon in the picture below. In addition, the area near the direct shadow looks darker than normal because the Earth also casts a partial shadow on the Moon's surface. Cool!

Click to see a full-size picture

The picture above shows the Moon straight out of the camera (although I added the 1Lens2 logo in post-production of course). The picture below shows the same view, but I adjusted the color in post-production.

Click to see a full-size picture

Both pictures were taken using the P1000's Moon scene mode which gives you the ability to adjust the color in-camera, but I usually adjust color in my photo editing software (Photoshop).

I chose a focal length of 2200mm so I could fit the entire Moon in the frame. You can get a closer view of the Moon when you zoom in to the P1000's maximum optical focal length of 3000mm.

BLOOMING CACTUS

As Monty Python would say, "and now for something completely different". In this section of the article, we transition from photographing a large celestial body in space to a small fruit on a cactus in the desert southwest of the United States.

The focal length has a lot to say about the subject of the picture. At 24mm, the subject of the picture is a colorful prickly pear cactus blooming in the mostly muted color of the American desert landscape. Actually, now that I'm home and looking at the 24mm picture, perhaps zooming in just a little and moving the catus a bit to the lower left third would better highlight the cactus as the subject.

Click to see a full-size picture

After zooming in to 2400mm, the subject of the picture becomes a single red fruit that stands out from the muted green color of the prickly pear cactus on which it grows.

Click to see a full-size picture

Look at the difference between the 24mm picture and the 2400mm picture when they are placed side by side. And we didn't even use the full zoom range of the P1000!

WATCH THE VIDEO

This article covers just a few of the super zooms in Episode 4 of my Super Zoom Variety Series. Click on the picture below to see all TEN super zooms.

Click to Watch the Video on YouTube

Thanks for reading this article and watching the video! You can watch the previous episodes of my Super Zoom Variety Series on YouTube by clicking on the following links:

• Episode #1
• Episode #2
• Episode #3

You can also check out some of my other related articles and videos that are listed below or you can browse through all of my articles.