"Ladies and gentlemen! Come one, come all, to see the incredible, the amazing Nikon COOLPIX P1000 super zoom camera as it zooms into a plethora of stunning scenes from the sky to the ocean to the desert! Marvel at the secrets that only the P1000 can reveal from a distance! Don't let this opportunity slip away - watch episode 5 of the Super Zoom Variety Series now and be part of an unforgettable experience of the ages!"

Hey, who knows - maybe Episode #5 of my Nikon COOLPIX P1000 Super Zoom Variety Series will be an unforgettable experience for the ages :)

I love traveling around with my P1000 and finding interesting things to zoom in on. Here are the plethora "stunning" scenes in this episode that you can marvel at :)

1. A hot air balloon
2. A kayaker out on the lake
3. The bell on top of a church built in the 1800s
4. The Apennine Mountains on the Moon
5. The inside of a World War 2 era B-17G bomber
6. A Great Blue Heron out on the lake (birding!)
7. The Reuben Lasker ship entering San Diego Bay
8. The sharp spines on a Saguaro cactus from far away
9. The MMT Observatory from 10.5 miles away
10. A dog beach on the other side of an ocean inlet

Episode 5 of the super zoom variety series consists mostly of video clips, but I take also pictures with the P1000 while I'm on my photo shoots, so below are photographs of three of the super zooms in this episode. You can click on most of the pictures to see a full-size view.

SHARP SPINES ON A CACTUS

The pictures below show a Saguaro cactus in the aptly named Saguaro National Park near Tucson, AZ. I really wanted to see the sharp spines on the cactus, but we need to stay on the trail while at the park. As you can see from the picture below, which was taken at a focal length of 24mm, there's no way we can see the sharp spines because the cactus is too far away. My guess is that the cactus is about 50 feet or about 15 meters away.

Click to see a full-size picture

But zooming in to the P1000's maximum optical focal length of 3000mm, we can clearly see the sharp points of the spines. At this super telephoto focal length, the depth of field is narrow, so some spines are in sharp focus and others are not.

Click to see a full-size picture

And here's something rather amazing: If you're reading this article on a device with a large screen (like a computer or a TV), you can actually see what appears to be a single thread of a spider web that's stretched between two of the spines just to the right near the top of the cactus. It's faint, but you can see it.

To put that into perspective, the diameter of a spider web thread typically ranges from 2 to 5 micrometers (microns) which is about 1/10th the thickness of a human hair. And the P1000 allows us to see it from about 50 feet or 15 meters away! That's amazing!

You might not be able to see that level of detail if you're reading this article on the relatively smaller screen of a cell phone. But I think that everyone should see a silk strand that's 2 to 5 microns thick from about 50 feet away, so here's a cropped image of just the area showing the spider web thread.

Spider web thread from 50 feet away.

HOT AIR BALLOON

From time to time, a hot air balloon floats over my neighborhood. That's usually a fun super zoom opportunity, so when I see a hot air balloon outside my window, I run out of the house with my Nikon P1000 like a kid chasing an ice cream truck on hot summer day.

This particular hot air balloon was apparently moving faster than the neurons could fire in my brain, so I didn't have time to take many pictures of it. I did record some good video, so here's a video frame capture of the balloon at the P1000's widest angle focal length of 24mm.

Video frame capture of the hot air balloon.

And here's a picture of the hot air balloon taken at 3000mm. Considering that the balloon looked like a little dark smudge in the sky to the naked eye, I think it's a pretty good super telephoto picture!

Click to see a full-size picture

I also record a video of the balloon at the P1000's maximum digital zoom which is equivalent to a focal length of 12,000mm! At that magnification, you can see that two of the people in the balloon's basket are wearing white baseball caps! You can see that video clip in episode #5 of my super zoom series.

THE MOON

I love the Moon. The Nikon P1000 and the Moon go together like chocolate and peanut butter. I would be outside taking pictures and recording video of the Moon every night it was visible if I had the time. Because the Moon is such a fascinating subject for super zooming, it tends to make its way into a lot of my videos.

Although the P1000's "Moon Mode" is great and I use it all the time, I also use the P1000 in "Manual" mode and manual focus sometimes. Why? Well, sometimes I want to have full control over shutter speed, aperture, ISO and focus to get the exact look that I want.

Here's a picture of the waxing gibbous phase of the Moon taken in full manual mode. The camera settings were:

• Focal Length: 3000mm
• Shutter Speed: 1/100 second
• Aperture: f/8
• ISO: 100
• File Format: JPG

Click to see a full-size picture

The gibbous phase is my favorite phase of the moon because a lot of the moon is illuminated, but we can also see the boundary between daytime (bright areas) and nighttime (dark areas). That boundary line, called the "Terminator" (no, not that Terminator!), is where you can see shadows which really bring out the detail of the Moon's terrain.

Want to get an even closer view of the Moon's surface? Me too! Check-out the picture of the Moon below which was taken with the same settings as the picture above, but at an equivalent focal length of 6000mm. We can reach that focal length by zooming in to the P1000's maximum optical focal length of 3000mm and then applying an in-camera digital magnification of 2Xs. The P1000 has a special algorithm called "Fine Dynamic Zoom" that optimizes digital zooming up to 2x so there is minimal image degradation.

Click to see a full-size picture

The 6000mm picture provides a nice view of the Apennine Mountain range on the Moon. Some of the peaks of the Apennine mountains are up to 3.1 miles, or 5 kilometers, high! Episode 5 of my super zoom variety series has a video clip of the Apennine Mountains at an equivalent focal length of 12,000mm (4X digital zoom)! It's actually pretty sharp for a digital zoom.

WATCH THE VIDEO

This article covers just a few of the super zooms in Episode #5. The article shows the super zooms as pictures, while the video below shows all TEN of the super zooms as video clips. So be sure to click on the picture below to... "marvel at the secrets that only the P1000 can reveal from a distance!" :)

Click to Watch the Video on YouTube

Thanks for reading this article and watching the video! You can watch the previous episodes of my P1000 Super Zoom Variety Series on YouTube by clicking on the following links:

• Episode #1
• Episode #2
• Episode #3
• Episode #4