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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

The P1000 is big (1 Viewer)

Re BIF with the P1000, my success rate is low, but so was with the P900. I find it difficult to nail the focus, in particular with birds with an unpredictable flight pattern. I did get some keeper record shots (P900) but the keeper ratio is extremely low.
When I shoot BIF with the P90/P1000 I take it more as a challenge/training excercise.

Target finding is what works best for me, I tried subject tracking but I didn't get good results.
 
I've been reading a few review sites on the P1000, but haven't seen any mention of 2 actions that i like to use on my D610.

1) Constant AF / AF-C
2) Back button AF

I never use the shutter button on D610 for focusing, so back button focusing would be required.

Back button and AF-C ( for me anyway ) would be needed for bird movement
 
Versatile

A few shots from today. Dragonfly in flight. the camera was manual preset using peaking 800mm, best of quite a bunch.About 4 mtrs.
Wren poked its little head out of the hedge at 20mtrs, 1500mm in Bird setting, burst of 7. Several other good shots.
Goldfinch about 6mtrs, waving about on the feeder, Bird setting,one of a burst.


Den
 

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A few shots from today. Dragonfly in flight. the camera was manual preset using peaking 800mm, best of quite a bunch.About 4 mtrs.
Wren poked its little head out of the hedge at 20mtrs, 1500mm in Bird setting, burst of 7. Several other good shots.
Goldfinch about 6mtrs, waving about on the feeder, Bird setting,one of a burst.

None of these photos is very sharp (though certainly sharp enough for an ID if that’s the main concern).
 
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Take your point Fugi, but at least I got the pics. By some standards I have probably never taken a perfect pic. I do have a 10X8 picture on the wall of my study, taken years ago with a Sony FD 185. This camera used floppy discs as storage, 4 shots per disc. By most standards it is not sharp enough, probably rated very noisy and lots of other faults. But I got the shot, I quite like the pose and the way the bird is obviously aware of me, printed on an inkjet printer the colour is very good.

That is the point of bridge cameras, the ability to point and shoot and get good record shots in a variety of situations from very close macro to Jupiter’s moons.

There are reams and reams of posts on BF from guys angsting about sensor size, noise,focal lengths and apertures. Weight of lens and body, the list goes on and on. Nikon have done a pretty good job with the P1000, not many situations where it will fail to deliver good quality images....................or am I easily satisfied?

Den
 
Take your point Fugi, but at least I got the pics. By some standards I have probably never taken a perfect pic. I do have a 10X8 picture on the wall of my study, taken years ago with a Sony FD 185. This camera used floppy discs as storage, 4 shots per disc. By most standards it is not sharp enough, probably rated very noisy and lots of other faults. But I got the shot, I quite like the pose and the way the bird is obviously aware of me, printed on an inkjet printer the colour is very good.

That is the point of bridge cameras, the ability to point and shoot and get good record shots in a variety of situations from very close macro to Jupiter’s moons.

There are reams and reams of posts on BF from guys angsting about sensor size, noise,focal lengths and apertures. Weight of lens and body, the list goes on and on. Nikon have done a pretty good job with the P1000, not many situations where it will fail to deliver good quality images....................or am I easily satisfied?

Fair enough, we all have our own standards. Personally, I’m much more tolerant of grain (noise) in a photo than many people are but am very intolerant of even a hint of unsharpness. That said, there’s no disputing the handiness of bridge cameras. I’ve birding cronies who carry them and who are often able to grab shots that I miss entirely with my big clumsy equipment.
 
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Are any P1000 owners using it as a spotting scope?

The hope is that because the scope has good reach and an acceptable display,
it might serve as a more comfortable instrument for scanning the fields, shores and waves, even if a tripod would still be required.
 
Almost the first thing I do is to scan the area in front of me when in a hide, zooming in and out to "see what's about" Over 200mtrs or so it is not as good as my ED80, but does the job.

Got a nice shot of Mars last evening and at the other extreme I am finding the macro from 3mtrs very handy...….

Den
 
Almost the first thing I do is to scan the area in front of me when in a hide, zooming in and out to "see what's about" Over 200mtrs or so it is not as good as my ED80, but does the job.

Got a nice shot of Mars last evening and at the other extreme I am finding the macro from 3mtrs very handy...….

Den

Thank you, that is helpful input.
I'm considering using the P1000 as a scope substitute, because birding travel freighted with camera, scope and tripod, plus binoculars gets to be clumsy.
 
I have never used a camera to replace a scope in the sense of counting shorebirds on a mudflat or something like that. But my travel the last couple of years have essentially been without scope because if I have a bird I cannot id based on binocular view, then I can usually shoot a few images and either id by zooming in on the camera or later when the images have been transferred to a PC. This has worked even with a camera that has 600-800mm equivalent (m4/3).

Niels
 
More versatilty

A couple more shots from yesterday. Woody from 22mtrs, almost completely hidden behind a screen of various flowers and branches, all at various distances. Not a chance of the camera picking it out at that distance. Only got a very short time to try to grab a shot...………..

Switch to manual....rotate focus ring....bingo! Wait a moment while the Woody runs up the tree in to view and click..gotcher :)

Mars was a doddle compared to that.


Woody hand held 1400mm F5.6
Mars1 2000mm F6.3
mars 3000mm F8

Den
 

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I actually saw one yesterday at the Catbird Twitch, absolute colossus next to my P900, but chap says stills taken from 4K video are superb.
 
Martin, not only bigger but much improved in many ways. Larger diameter front lens lets in more light so can take pics at 2000 F5.6 instead of F8. Manual focus is much easier "to navigate", click the button and turn the ring on the lens to set peaking (or not if you want) I have several times mentioned the EVF....brilliant upgrade.

Macro down to almost touching the lens or zoom out to subject and then macro setting, going to have a lot of fun with that, bugs and bees and flowers..and of course the other extreme for moon shots.

Not tried it for BIF yet, all I have around here are gulls, rooks and Jackdaws, although I missed the chance of a Heron gliding past in the field behind my house, but I did get some stills about 180yds away.

I think that my biggest problem with BIF will be that I tend to zoom out quite a lot :) perhaps I should come back to about 4 or 500mm.

I loved my 900, but the 1000 is in a different ball park.

Den
 
Very detailed pic Neil. What setting did you use please? I can never seem to get that sort of feather detail with either the 900 or the 1000.

Den
 
Hi bud,this particular photo was shot on f6.3 and iso 400.This gave a shutter speed of 1/100.
The most important thing i found with my particular camera was finding the best aperture by taking photos of something highly detailed at each aperture setting.I found that f6.3 gave by far the best quality so this is what i use most of the time...... always use a monopod too.
As a one time sceptic of this camera i'm finding that it is capable of some great quality shots in the right conditions.....it's just harder to get these type of shots than if i were using my slr.
I'll post some more taken with the camera so you can see the warbler wasn't a one off.
 
Water Rail.....quite pleased with the autofocus on the camera ad it seems to be able to hit on very small areas.
 

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