Nikon Coolpix P1100 review: it’s a kind of magic

The Nikon Coolpix P1100 follows in pretty much the exact same footprints of the preceding P1000, with just a couple of tweaks. As such, it inherits the previous camera’s mighty 125x optical zoom lens, equivalent to 24-3000mm in full-frame terms. Yes, that’s 3000mm at the long end – more telescope than telephoto. It’s also a real achievement that ramps things up from the 83x zoom range of the previous Coolpix P900. I wouldn’t call any of them a ‘compact camera’, despite having a fixed rather than interchangeable lens, but the P1100 definitely sets out to be one of the best bridge cameras in the world.

Nikon Coolpix P1100: Specifications

Nikon Coolpix P1100: Price

Dangling off the Nikon Coolpix 1100 is a price tag of $1,098 / £1,049 / $AU1,749, very similar to that of the preceding P1000. It’s pretty pricey for a bridge camera, going up against the likes of the Canon PowerShot SX70 HS at $699 / £580 but it costs the same as the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ2000/FZ2500 in the USA at $1,049 / £899. The Coolpix P1100 leaves both of these cameras dead in the water for outright zoom range.

Nikon Coolpix P1100: Design & Handling

All of the freakish frivolity that made the Coolpix P1000 such an oddball delight remains the same in the P1100. It features the same headline attraction of a 24-3000mm (effective) optical zoom range that has an f/2.8-8 aperture rating. That’s a pretty narrow aperture at the long end but only to be expected. The telescopic ability of the lens is backed up by highly effective optical image stabilization or ‘Vibration Reduction’, which is absolutely essential for handheld shooting. The lens is based on 17 elements arranged in 12 groups, and includes five ED (Extra-low Dispersion) elements plus a Super ED element, aiming to boost clarity and color accuracy while minimizing aberrations.

Handling feels comfortable and natural, despite the camera’s fairly large size and weight. There’s a chunky handgrip and plenty of room to rest your left hand under the camera. The P1100 looks pretty big even at its shortest zoom setting, but the lens extends greatly when zooming in towards the 3000mm mark.

While the camera itself is large, the 16MP image sensor is relatively small, with a form factor of 1/2.3-inch. That’s very low-rent in physical size but a small sensor is dictated by the zoom range, otherwise the lens would have to be absolutely enormous. Also in keeping with the small sensor size, the sensitivity range is relatively limited at just ISO 100-6,400. On the plus side, the camera supports RAW quality mode as well as JPEG. The video specs also remain unchanged from the P1000, with 4K UHD on the menu at a maximum of 30 frames per second.

I like that the P1100 inherits a fully articulated 3.2-inch rear screen from the P1000, although it’s disappointing that it’s still not a touchscreen. Further plus points include a detailed 2,359k-dot OLED electronic viewfinder, and a pop-up flash in addition to a hot shoe for mounting a ‘proper’ flashgun.

So what’s new in the P1100? First up, the USB port is upgraded to USB-C, to bring it in line with the latest retail standards for electronic devices. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are also upgraded to newer versions, the latter being handy for using the Nikon ML-L7 remote controller, for which you can now assign the two function buttons to any of the camera’s functions. Wireless image sharing via Nikon's SnapBridge app remains, as well as enabling images to be location tagged via your mobile phone’s GPS.

There's a sizeable selection of scene modes and effect filters. Dedicated shooting modes available direct from the mode dial include Bird-Watching and Moon. The huge telephoto reach is naturally useful for both of these shooting scenarios so I’m glad to see them covered on the mode dial. Another upgrade in the P1100 is that the Bird-Watching mode now includes the option to cycle between spot, normal and wide areas for autofocus. And for after dark, the P1100 also adds a new Fireworks scene mode.

Nikon Coolpix P1100: Performance

Unlike many recent cameras, the P1100 has no phase-detection points on its image sensor, so autofocus is purely a contrast-detection affair. With that in mind, I’m impressed that autofocus is pretty quick and able to track moving subjects, throughout its zoom range. At least, that’s what I found in decent lighting conditions but autofocus proved prone to hunting back and forth for low-contrast subjects, especially under dull lighting conditions. I was keen to try out the Moon shooting mode but sadly my time with the camera saw a string of moonless nights. I contented myself with the Bird-Watching mode, as shown below...

The following gallery comprises a variety of shots at different focal lengths, taken at Chew Valley Lake in the UK county of Somerset.

Image 1 of 7

If you’ve ever tried locating and locking onto fleeting subjects at very long telephoto focal lengths, you’ll know it can be a real challenge. Help is at hand with a snap-back zoom button, so you can zoom out to acquire a subject and then zoom back in, all at the touch and release of button. I also like that there’s a customizable control ring at the front of the lens barrel, but the choices for this are annoyingly limited and omit the possibility of manual focus override for when autofocus runs into trouble.

The P1100 packs an excellent optical VR system built into the lens. I found that it gave me a good hit rate of sharp images during handheld shooting, even at the longest 3000mm zoom setting. That’s quite an achievement for an optical stabilizer. If you’ve been hawk-eyed following the specifications of the P1100, you’ll notice that the effectiveness of VR has been downgraded to 4-stops, from the 5-stop effectiveness of the P1000. There’s actually no difference in real-world performance, it’s more down to a change in the technicalities of CIPA testing and accreditation. The same goes for the apparent slight drop in the power of the pop-up flash module, which again remains the same in both cameras. Anyway, check out the following handheld shots from my local lake, taken at the shortest and longest effective focal lengths of 24mm and 3000mm. I felt absolutely no need to try digital interpolation, which can quadruple the effective telephoto reach to 12,000mm (3.6x for 4K UHD movie capture).

The P1100 is definitely a camera that benefits from bright lighting conditions. The f/8 aperture rating at the long end of the zoom range is pretty narrow, and the sensitivity range is limited. It tops out at ISO 6400 and image quality really suffers with a loss of fine detail and dynamic range even at ISO 800. With good lighting, however, the P3000 can deliver very pleasing results.

The shots shown above and below are another demonstration of the minimum and maximum zoom range, with the wide-angle and telephoto shots being taken from the same position.

Nikon Coolpix P1100: Sample Images

Let’s play a little game, even if it’s not quite ‘Spot the difference’ or ‘Where’s Wally?’ I shot the following gallery of images at the Bristol Floating Harbour in the UK, on a sunny morning. Apart from the very last shots, the whole sequence runs in pairs, using the shortest 24mm and longest 3000mm zoom settings respectively. In some cases, you might be hard pressed to spot the relatively tiny area of the subject in the wide-angle shot that fills the frame in the telephoto shot, such is the immense zoom range of the lens.

Image 1 of 24

Nikon Coolpix P1100: Lab Results

We don't usually lab test cameras with small sensors like the P1100, as they don't tend to perform well, and often there's no option to shoot in RAW, which we require to ensure fair testing. Consequently we only have a limited selection of fixed lens cameras with which to compare the P1100. The Panasonic FZ80D/82D is the closest rival, being a bridge camera with a 60x zoom range and a similarly sized sensor. The Panasonic Lumix TZ99 is almost as new as the P1100, and also packs a 1/2.3-inch sensor. It can only muster 30x zoom, but that's impressive for such a small camera. We're also including the Sony RX10 IV here, as this is the best bridge camera on sale today thanks to its relatively large 1-inch sensor that produces superior image quality.

Resolution (line widths/picture height):

Images from the P1100 are a little soft, causing it to suffer slightly in our resolution test, as it falls behind cameras that have the same sized image sensor. The 20MP, 1-inch sensor in the RX10 IV proves its worth here by resolving noticeably more detail, especially at higher ISOs.

Dynamic range (EV):

Dynamic range is a measure of a camera's ability to record extreme brightness ranges and still retain detail in the brightest and darkest parts of the scene. It's measured in EV (exposure values, or 'stops').

The P1100's dynamic range is pretty good, consistently beating that from the Panasonic cameras, and not falling too far short of the RX10 IV's performance.

Signal to noise ratio (decibels):

This test compares the amount of random noise generated by the camera at different ISO settings as a proportion of the actual image information (the 'signal'). Higher values are better and we expect to see the signal to ratio fall as the ISO is increased.

The P1100 controls noise fairly well, producing slightly cleaner images than those from the two Panasonic cameras. However, the limitations of the Nikon's small image sensor are really shown up by the RX10 IV, which is in a league of its own in terms of image clarity.

Lens sharpness:

The P1100 is all about its lens, so it makes sense to lab test that too. We'd normally test a lens at its minimum and maximum focal lengths, plus two more focal lengths in between. That's not possible with the P1100 as we'd need a test facility about half a mile long to test its lens at 3000mm, so instead we tested the lens at 24mm and 200mm.

As we've never lab tested the lens on a bridge camera before, we've got nothing in our database with which to directly compare the P1100 here. Instead we're including a Nikon superzoom APS-C (DX) lens for comparison - the AF-S DX 18-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR - which we originally tested using a Nikon D5500 DSLR.

Predicably, the 18-300mm lens is significantly sharper in the center of frame than the P1100's lens, both at the minimum focal length, and at 200mm. The P1100's performance isn't actually bad though, especially given its extreme focal range.

Corner sharpness is amazingly close between the P1100 and our comparison standalone lens. This is more due to the 18-300mm lens being rather soft in the corners than the P1100 being sharp, but again, considering the huge focal range that the P1100's lens covers, it's corner sharpness is fair. We've tested some lenses with a fraction of the P1100's focal range that aren't significantly sharper.

Nikon Coolpix P1100: Verdict

There are so many cameras on the market that are so similar to each other. I really like that the Nikon Coolpix P1100 offers something genuinely different and rather quirky. In practical real-world shooting, I rarely found the need to stretch into the longer half of its epic 125x optical zoom range but it’s nice to have the availability when I really need to cover a lot of distance. Image quality under low lighting and high ISO settings is disappointing but for a sunny day’s sports, action and wildlife shooting scenarios, the P1100 has a lot going for it.

Alternatives

The Canon PowerShot SX70 HS bridge camera has a 65x zoom lens, with an effective range of 21-1365mm. That’s only just over half the optical zoom range pf the P1100 but the Canon is fairly compact at 127 x 921 x 117mm and at 610g, is less than half the weight of the P1100. It currently sells for around $699 / £580.

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ2000/FZ2500 sacrifices outright zoom range in favor of a much larger, 1-inch format image sensor. You still get 20x optical zoom though, with an effective range of 24-480mm in full-frame terms. Many might find that plenty. Vital statistics are 138 x 10s x 135mm and 966g. The Panasonic costs around $1,049 / £899.