No dice with my Coolpix

*Please remember that the Nikon Coolpix P530 I keep discussing on this site was bought used.  I had no testing done on it to see if it was 100% when I got it.  With that said there is a very slim chance that I am discussing a camera that doesn’t work as well as a brand new one.

While on my trip up in the Cascades, I wanted to push my Nikon Coolpix P530 to its limits while giving it every possible chance.  Sunday night was the clearest sky I have had the opportunity to shoot since I got my camera.  I was positioned in a clearing at the bottom of a valley, where I was miles away from the closest humans. 

I was above all of the lowland clouds and the only light pollution I had to deal with was from the 3″ display on the back of the camera.  I was shooting in 15 minute intervals because it was so dang cold.  15 minutes in the cold shooting then I would put the camera in a Ziploc bag with some rice in my warm truck for 15 minutes (20-30 degrees warmer that outside).  I was trying to prevent humidity building up in the camera.

ISO 400, F3, 4 sec. Shutter

I started with ISO 100 with f-stop wide open with the max 15 second shutter speed.  I took shots with different zooms, and settings until about 1:30AM.  This was about 45 minutes before the moonrise with a 22.1% illuminated moon.  With all of those shots and no light pollution, not even from the moon, the image above was the best shot I was able to take of a sky full of stars. Something else I noticed was that my images looked different depending on the display I used.  I have a 19″ Computer monitor, a 17.3″ laptop display and use my 55″ LED Samsung TV/Monitor.

I am not ok with this.  I will continue to use this camera, to further my photography,  until it falls apart or I get an upgrade.  I need to upgrade my camera if I am going to have a chance of getting better sky shots or detailed low light shots…

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