Nikon P900 figure of merit number is extremely high

Jock Elliott

Hall of Famer
Location
Troy, NY
Some of you may remember this old post: For wildlife photographers: figure of merit calculations for various cameras (it's about reach!)

It presents, basically, a way of calculating the "reach" potential of cameras my multiplying the effective focal length of a lens by itself (squaring the number) and then multiplying it by the number of megapixels in the sensor.

So, for the Fz200, you get 600mm x 600mm x 12 megapixels = 4.320 million

In that previous post, I worked through the math for a variety of configurations, and (if I have the figures right) here are the results (the bigger the number, the better the reach):

FZ200 -- 4.320
FZ1000 -- 3.216
D3300 with 70-300 -- 4.860
Olympus M5 with 100-300 -- 5.760
Nikon D810 with 400mm tele -- 5.760
Nikon 1 V3 with 70-300CX -- 14.580

Here's the number for the Nikon P900: 64.000

The guys who invented the figure of merit calculation (see the previous post for links to the original posts made by them) added this at the end of their paper:

"Limitations of the FM

Uses for the FM are strictly limited to comparing the long-distance image capabilities of various digicams which have differing FLs and number of pixels. Further, the effect of lens quality, digicam internal programs, use or non-use of a tripod, and photographer expertise can also affect image resolution, but are not considered by the FM equation The FM is merely a mathematical formula for comparing telephoto capabilities of various digicams when all other factors are equal. "

Cheers, Jock
 
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