7.0/ 10
- Remarkable 125x optical zoom
- Bluetooth and USB-C
- Some use beyond its zoom
Taken from the same spot about 1 minute apart. You can just barely make out the first duckling coming around the corner on the left size of the maze.
Let’s get this out of the way up front: this camera is chonkers. It is not subtle. It is not small. It is larger than my full-frame Canon R6 with a huge prime lens on it. When you zoom in, the lens extends out from the body, nearly doubling the total size and it looks absurd. It’s possible to use one-handed but given the odd weight balance, you’ll generally need two hands. For anything other than bright sunlight, I strongly recommend a monopod or tripod. I wanted to state that info up front because this is a niche camera and as such, it’s not for everyone. I want you to understand what you’re getting into.
You can also get some great shots of the moon. You’ll generally need a tripod, but you can get incredibly close and detailed pictures. Any closer and you’d need a telescope or an industrial supply of liquid oxygen and RP-1.
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The plane I was trying to photograph is not in focus and would have been blurred anyway because of the air. However, the bird, which I didn’t notice at all until looking over the photos, is perfectly sharp.
Overall image quality is … fine. Lacking the computational tricks of a modern phone, the images aren’t as vibrant or sharp as you can get with better, modern phones. You can shoot raw, at least in some modes, so you can improve the image with whatever photo editing software you choose. After shooting with the P1100 for a while, I got the best zoomed-in results standing as still as possible, shooting burst and “walking” the camera to the right, framing on a distant subject as it took multiple photos. Trying to get the right shot one-and-done proved beyond my patience. To be fair, shooting bursts is pretty common for many types of photography. I just typically shoot landscapes. At 7 frames per second, the burst isn’t particularly fast and it takes a moment to save the maximum of seven images to the SD card. Still, overall, I got a far greater number of photos that I was satisfied with using this method.
The camera’s video is fairly unremarkable, looking much like the video from a phone a few years ago. It’s great that you can use the zoom while recording. The optical and digital stabilization means you can even get reasonably stable footage handheld. The lens’ zoom and focus motors aren’t particularly quiet, however. If you zoom or have autofocus enabled during a recording, and there isn’t a lot of ambient noise where you are, you’ll hear them in your video. This isn’t a huge deal, it’s an extremely recognizable sound. Many Hollywood movies add it in when a character is recording video and zooms in because people expect it. There are newer cameras and lenses with much quieter motors, but again, they’re all more expensive.
Will the photos and videos work for social media? Yes. Can you print the photos? If you nail the focus, yes, but not too large. To put it as broadly as possible, you can absolutely get pictures with the P1100 that would not be possible with any phone, and without spending significantly more money, and no other new camera can either. However, the photos are often quite soft and lack the detail, color, and dynamic range of better cameras.
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