Published: December 14, 2018
When Nikon designed the Coolpix P1000 they decided to shoot the moon, literally and figuratively. The P1000 is a monster of a camera, with 125x zoom up to 3000mm equivalent focal length. The camera can shoot RAW (.NRF) images as well as 4K video. The 1/2.3 inch CMOS sensor has 16MP resolution and has an ISO range from 100 to 6,400. The camera can shoot up to 7 frames at 7fps. The 3.2-inch LCD screen rotates and provides unlimited shooting possibilities. The Coolpix P1000 has a single SD card slot that supports SD, SDHC and SDXC memory cards.
To find the best memory cards for the Nikon P1000, a total of 123 Secure Digital cards were tested in the camera. Write speed tests for RAW images compare the performance of each card. Further information about the camera performance can be found in the analysis. Recommended SD cards for the Nikon Coolpix P1000 provide the best performance for this camera.
The Nikon P1000 is mounted on a tripod and controlled by a remote timer. The test subject is a detailed scene with fixed lighting. The camera is set to 24mm focal length at f/2.8. The P1000 limits continuous shooting to 7 frames, however the camera will take further images if the shutter is pressed again. The test is conducted for 30 seconds: 2 second shutter actuation followed by 1 second pause for a total of 10 times. Due to the behavior of this camera it is not possible to determine an exact buffer full condition. Write speed is estimated based on the total amount of data written divided by the total write time. Several tests of different durations conducted and found an estimated 1.65 second write delay. This write delay is an approximate adjustment that accounts for the delay from the first shutter activation until the first file is written to the memory card as well as any delay in the on-screen indicator indicating the camera has finished writing. Write speed is calculated in MB/s (1 MB = 1,048,576 bytes) for RAW image format.
The write speed of the Nikon P1000 is limited by the camera. The maximum average write speed during continuous shooting was 34.1 MB/s. Several cards achieved this speed, or close to it. The camera does not support UHS-II, however UHS-II cards can be used in the camera because the cards are backwards compatible and will operate in UHS-I and Standard SD modes. Most cards tested are capable of much higher write speed but the camera can not take advantage of it.
During the test the fastest cards were able to get to 50 shots in RAW mode during the 30 second test. The slowest card managed only 32 shots in the same time period. The camera limits shooting to 7 shots when the shutter release is activated. The shutter release must be reactivated for the camera to continue shooting. The fastest cards allowed three to four 7-shot sets before the camera began to reduce the number of shots per set.
When choosing a memory card for the P1000 several cards provide similar performance because the camera is the limiting factor. One card stood out by providing consistently high performance at a reasonable price: the SanDisk Extreme Pro 95MB/s UHS-I card. Several sizes of this card were near the top of the list. SanDisk Extreme Plus and Extreme cards also provided good performance and support fast enough write speeds for this camera. Using a UHS-II card in the camera is overkill; these ultra-fast types of cards are much more expensive than fast UHS-I cards. The main advantage of a UHS-II card is its potentially higher read speed for faster transfers to a computer when using a UHS-II card reader.
The P1000 has an on-board USB Hi-speed (USB 2.0) port that can be used to transfer images from the camera to a computer. To test the download speed 200 RAW images were transferred from the P1000 to a computer with a SSD drive. A USB 2.0 cable was connected to the Micro-USB port on the camera to the computer. The card used in the camera is a SanDisk Extreme Pro 95MB/s U3 V30 256GB. The 4.9GB transfer took just over 8 minutes and 40 seconds, at an average speed of 9.7MB/s. This is poor performance for USB 2.0 and it would be much faster to transfer images using a separate USB 3.0 card reader. Typical UHS-I cards can provide over 90MB/s read speed and UHS-II cards are able to reach over 250MB/s when copying files using a UHS-II card reader. Additional card reader tests can be found in the Card Reader Reviews.