Watch this video created by a camera with a zoom lens.

It's on the new Canon SX-60: a 65x optical zoom, with a 4x digital zoom tacked on at the end for a 260x combined zoom with Optical Image Stabilizer. And the image seems to remain fairly well focused without jumping around too much during the entire zoom. They don't say, but I suppose the camera must be on a tripod.

So this is the new way cameras will be competing with each other? Already Nikon has announced a camera with an 83x Zoom Range of 24-2000mm.

I guess they had to come up with something to convince people to not just use their cell phones to take pictures. For me, this is an even more exciting new development than the Go-Pro camera. At my age, I won't be flying along a zip line in the jungle, so I don't really need a helmet cam. But I did buy a zoom lens for my Sony NEX-F3 camera, and I'm glad I did. But it only zooms from 55 to 210 mm, not quite 4X and it takes some time to change the lens every time I want to take some pictures with the zoom, and then back again when done. It's an extra thing to carry around besides the camera, although I suppose with the super-zoom you'd want to be carrying a portable tripod.

I could have used more zoom during my last trip in Thailand. We were exploring a temple in Lampang and discovered the chedi there had quite a large bee hive on it's side, near the top. I put on my zoom lens to get a better look, but even then I couldn't see the detail I wanted. With the Canon super-zoom, I'm sure I could have easily seen individual bees coming in and out of the hive!

There may be a gotcha I don't know about, but I will certainly be looking into these new cameras!

Text & image :copyright: 2014-15 by Ron Chester
9 March 2015