Would I recommend it to a friend? Hell yes!
I’m a semi professional photographer, been working part time at it since the 90’s and needed a long zoom solution for vacation photos. I have a Canon 100-400 L lens and thought about coupling it with one of my APS-C bodies and a 2x teleconverter but something about carrying all that gear for photos with little to no commercial viability didn’t appeal to me. This camera came up a a warehouse deal with an additional 15% off for Amazon Prime day and so I thought I’ll get it considering I’m going on vacation to Yellowstone and could use an the extra long zoom reach.To put the camera to the test I took the obligatory moon shot but then I took a short trip. I visited a local wild life ranch and cavern here in San Antonio area called Natural Bridge Wild Life Ranch and Natural Bridge Caverns. In the wild life ranch I snagged a shot of a Zebra which I sold four copies of in a week just by word of mouth – so much for no commercial viability.Wildlife Ranch photos here:[…]Cavern Photos here:https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1675684126085238.1073741885.1535609413426044&type=1&l=2f0cb6c5a6It was a lot of fun to play with the camera, the zoom reach is beyond expectation and certainly has a bit of a WOW factor to it. The fact the camera has manual modes is a bit of a misnomer since the shutter and aperture range you’re allow to play with are not the full spectrum but a very limited set, for example, when zoomed in you can open all the way up to f6.5 or stop all the way down to f8.0. Ideally with an inexpensive lens I’d have liked to stop down to f11 to ensure edge to edge sharpness. Do to this limitation I ended up using full auto and adjusting the scene selection as well as using exposure comp for almost every shot.As one might expect this kind of zoom range makes it easy to induce camera shake but the camera does a reasonably good job of suppressing it. For example, shooting at 1/500 of a second and zoomed to 2000mm yields a sharp image about 1/3 of the time. During shooting I was constantly pixel peeping to see if focus was sharp which it usually wasn’t so the solution is to take lots of shots, bracing, holding breath, leaning on something (I brought a mono pod into the caverns). Shooting with it on the wide angle is great if you’re not using flash (flash was too powerful and no flash settings, could possibly fix with a napkin or post-it over the flash), zoomed all the way out the P900 provides a nice f2.8 aperture which is faster than some of the competition in the range with smaller zoom lenses.Back at the computer it was disappointing not to have Raw files to work with. The jpgs were highly compressed and I suspect highly processed in camera to compensate for the inexpensive lens. My first test shots at home made me adjust the in camera processing to add one more notch (you can add up to three) of both contrast and saturation. None the less there is a stop or two of additional range in processing the images in Adobe LR. Highlights and shadows were unrecoverable when completely blown out something my 5D has probably spoiled me on. In the end I think I threw out 1/5th of the shots and about 1/10th of remaining were worth talking about (see links). Like I said before, the solution to the shortcomings of the camera are to take multiple shots of the composition and subj. you want. Honestly I think if I had used my APS-C body and teleconverter I wouldn’t have fared too much better and the time spent taking extra shots with the P900 would have been spent catching my breath carrying an additional 5lbs of gear; not to mention shaking the cramps out of my hand.—Summary—Pros:Zoom ReachRelative portabilityValue considering the lens is uniqueCons:Small sensor sizecompression noiseISO noise even at relatively low ISO (I was trying to keep it at or below 800)high rate of poor shotsSlow to respond after taking multiple shots (serious problem if you intend to do bird watching)And not such a con but a note, there are better options out there in this price range if you’re not looking the occasional bird photo or moon shot.I teetered on the edge of returning it but in the end it does provide unique shots at a price that doesn’t hurt that bad. So if you can find a deal you’re probably going to be very happy with it.Would I recommend it to a friend? Hell yes – gotta try this zoom, it’s insane and worth the shortcomings especially if you have a little skill (or just patience) and can work at overcoming them.

If you love looking at the moon this camera is for you, its great how close you can get to the moons caters.. can even zoom in on Saturn with this great camera

Por un precio demasiado conveniente, es una cámara que da un zoom extremadamete bueno. como en las fotos de prueba pueden ver, tomé una foto a mas de 3km de distancia, y conservando la calidad de la imagen. por supuesto hubiese sido mejor con un tripié pero a esa distancia focal, un tripié económico o muy ligero sigue siendo poco para tener un poco mas de firmeza.las fotos y video se han modificado para ponerlas en esta valoración.aun teniendo la foto a pulso, la calidad es muy buena, el visor es digital por lo que te ofrece toda la información que la pantalla grande ofrece,la configuración si es un poco tediosa y algo oculta, cosa que con cámaras como D5500 es un poco mas implícita.el lente no tiene una forma de hacer un enfoque manual de manera rápida, todo es desde la opción manual, eligiendo las opciones del botón giratorio de la cámara. y el movimiento es lento, por lo que si quiere enfocar algo de manera rápida en manual esto no es posible.incluye un gps, y el video no suele tardar mucho, pero suficiente para tener con una cámara personalizada para fotos.