The Nikon Coolpix P600’s 60x optical zoom dominates this particular camera, but that’s both an up and downside.
Go on holidays anywhere, and you’ll see plenty of people taking photos with their smartphones. Hundreds, if not thousands of them, in fact. The explosive growth of smartphone photography has led to compact cameras becoming either increasingly cheap, or terribly specialised, hitting the areas where a standard smartphone struggles. It’s that space that Nikon’s Coolpix P600 sits, offering a 60x optical zoom, making it what’s often called a “superzoom” camera.
There’s no escaping the zoom on the P600 — and that’s on many levels. This is a physically imposing camera with a pseudo-DSLR style design and a large 60x optical zoom lens. It does take a little while to zoom outwards, and you’re never going to be able to do so in any kind of subtle fashion, because the fully extended lens is quite a sight to see.
I tested the P600 in Tokyo recently, making it my primary “holiday” camera for a week. That does remove it slightly from lab-style conditions, but the intent was to see how it coped when used as a holiday zoom camera. I think that’s a solid use case for this kind of product, because superzoom compacts are still rather solidly aimed at the crowd that wants easy photos with just a dab of complexity, rather than those who would prefer to have full control and a variety of lenses to use.
When it comes to zooming, the P600 offers two controls to pick from. There’s a traditional rocker control near the shutter button, as well as a side mounted rocker. I found I tended to use the traditional zoom simply because that’s where I’d expect it to be, but the secondary control wasn’t an issue in any real way.
The zoom worked well for the most part, with the obvious conclusion that you’re better off with a tripod at extreme zoom distances, because keeping steady while handheld is a genuine challenge for any superzoom.
The P600 provided solid results for most of my test environments. It’s not the greatest camera in low light, where it often took a while to decide when to autofocus, but results were generally pleasing and sharp. It’s wireless enabled for easy sharing to a smartphone, but there’s no inbuilt GPS option in the camera itself.
The viewfinder is solid but unexceptional, and the same is true of the EVF. Annoyingly there’s no autodetection when using the EVF, so you’ve got to manually switch between displays if you prefer an EVF approach to taking photos.
The P600 is relatively light considering its large lens, but that same large lens means that it is a relatively large camera to heft around. It’s broadly comparable to carrying around a dedicated DSLR or ILC camera, but without the lens flexibility of those approaches, and that is a concern.
The Nikon Coolpix carries a retail price of around $549 in Australia, although some online outlets do cut that price down a bit. Whether or not a superzoom suits you very much depends on the type of photography you’re keen on. If you’re likely to want a lot of distance shooting then the Coolpix P600 offers a solid camera option.
I’m not quite as sold, simply because in this size I’d prefer an ILC camera and the flexibility that optional lenses bring, but if you did want an all-in camera with a good zoom then it could work well for you.