My first full day with new camera - Nikon P900

Yesterday, I finally got a chance to put my new Nikon Coolpix P900 camera through it’s paces at the America’s Cup World Series (Portsmouth).

The event was very crowded and my wife and I arrived too late to get a decent viewing position – but I guess that matters less when you have a 83x / 2000mm zoom on your camera. So we found a place to sit further along the beach and waited.

My main concern with shooting sailboats that travel 50 mph and are 1km-2km away from me was blur and focus. After trying a number of the different options – Auto-mode, Sport-scene, etc – I opted for Shutter-priority set at 1/640.

Here’s a few of the shots from the race – again, note that I am between 1km and 2km away from these guys and there’s some sea haze impacting the clarity somewhat – the zoom on this camera is nothing short of amazing.

Despite these shots, I found the camera frustrating at times. There is a delay from releasing the shutter to when you can take another photo – even with the display off. I tried the various burst mode options but they actually disable the shutter after the release while it takes the series of photos which I found really bizarre. But this is just something you get used to I suspect – not a bad trade off considering everything else.

Later that evening, we went to the concert and I messed around with taking some photos. Again, we were pretty far away and naturally it became problematic as the light started to fade. But here’s a few snaps of.. McBusted (sigh).