The Nikon P950 packs a lot of specs for a camera that costs only $800.
4K video recording, RAW 16mp photos and oh yeah — a gigantic 24-2000mm compact zoom lens.
Mentioning that fact alone is enough to turn heads, but whether the P950 delivers the image quality to back up the specs is more important.
Nikon P950 image quality test
I spent a month shooting with the Nikon COOLPIX P950 in order to thoroughly test it out for my upcoming review.
As most people will use this camera for birding/wildlife photography of some form, that’s how I predominantly used this camera.
Overall I was pretty impressed with the P950, but before I get too far — let’s take a look at the sample footage and photos I shot with it.
How good is the Nikon P950?
As evident by the quality of the footage & photos in the video, the Nikon P950 is very capable of producing good quality images.
For a sub-$1000 camera with 2000mm zoom, it actually manages to capture crisp, clear images and very nice video — sometimes.
To get enough footage to make this 3:30 min long video I captured about 50GB of 4K footage and photos, the vast majority of which is fairly unusable.
Sometimes it’s because the focus isn’t quite as fast as DSLRs other times it’s due to poor lighting (for real: anything but a sunny day and this camera is near useless).
If you’re trying to shoot a fast moving or once in a lifetime subject — say a hawk quickly swooping down to catch a mouse — you are most likely going to end up disappointed and with a blurry photo.
However, if you are patient, willing to take 10-20 photos of an animal just to get a good one, and also happen to be photographing an animal that’s not prone to always running away, then you can get very good results with this camera.
Conclusion — Is the Nikon P950 worth it?
The Nikon P950 is more pricey than other superzoom cameras like the Panasonic FZ80 and Canon SX70HS.
Heck, the P950 is even $200 more than its predecessor the P900.
For that extra money though you are getting a camera that — while not the most versatile, adaptable, or reliable — is able to one thing really well: zoom in hundreds of feet to get a photo you otherwise could only get with gear costing $5k-$10k.
If you are looking for a camera that can do that (and don’t already own the P900) then the Nikon P950 is the right camera for you and more than worth the price tag.
