Need a camera that can zoom in from miles out

[soufiej]

There is no law against photography from a public place unless its a public shower, bath, changing room, or other place where privacy is expected.
Any shot from a street or other public access is fine.

Tell you what, go to any downtown area in any major city and start taking photos of any bank, federal building, airport, National Guard depository, schoolyard or police station, etc and see what interesting, and interested, people you will be talking to.

Privacy is expected when you check into a hotel room. Starting taking photos of hotel windows from miles away and the days of "Rear Window" are suddenly in your face.

I'd say common sense should inform you of what to photograph and what you should not photograph but that would be hoping for a lot it seems. Smartphone cameras have made this an impossible suggestion.

 

[dennybeall]

Guess I better be more careful with the contract I have to take photos of those bank buildings at night. Walk the entire perimeter and photograph every side to determine which lights are/or are not working.
Government building are a problem after the stuff they put in place after nine eleven but that's all.

 

[KC1]

There is no law against photography from a public place unless its a public shower, bath, changing room, or other place where privacy is expected.
Any shot from a street or other public access is fine.

Tell you what, go to any downtown area in any major city and start taking photos of any bank, federal building, airport, National Guard depository, schoolyard or police station, etc and see what interesting, and interested, people you will be talking to.

Privacy is expected when you check into a hotel room. Starting taking photos of hotel windows from miles away and the days of "Rear Window" are suddenly in your face.

I'd say common sense should inform you of what to photograph and what you should not photograph but that would be hoping for a lot it seems. Smartphone cameras have made this an impossible suggestion.

Actually that's not correct, it is up to the person in the hotel, house, etc. to close the drapes if they want no one to be able to look in.

I have taken a lot of photos of banks, etc from the street, it's perfectly legal.

Street Photography and the Law: 7 things you need to know
Street Photography and The Law

 

[dannylightning]

Nikon P900 and the Canon SX60 are probably going to be the best quality with the most zoom for not a huge amount of money.. both take good photos, the nikon has more optical zoom 2000mm of zoom but i think the canon has a little better image quality 1365mm of zoom... once you start using digital zoom sure you get even more zoom but the image quality goes down the drain so i always turn of the digital zoom on point and shoot cameras.

my birding lens on my crop sensor camera gives me 900mm of zoom. one place i shoot is at a lake its roughly 0.4 miles from where i stand to the other side of the lake... i can get photos of people on the other side of the lake, i can see them well in the photos but its not enough zoom to get a close up of the people,, i can get a nice photo of a house on the other side of the lake.. i cant see in the windows of the houses though.. if someone was standing at the window you could see them but you cant zoom in on the person, with 2000mm of zoom like the p900 has you might be able to get a pretty close photo of that person standing in the window but i am not sure how close exactly.. i can get a nice photo of a small sail boat that is on the other size of the lake and you can see the people on it but its not enough to zoom in close on the people on the boat... my intent is not photographing people at the lake, its shooting birds, and sometimes boats. i took a few photos of the houses on the other side of the lake and people i saw standing on the other side of the lake just to see how they turned out. i have scraped those photos so or i would post one.

so were talking less than half a mile here at the place i am shooting. even with the p900 and 2k mm of zoom your not going to get to zoom in close to people that are a few mils a way.. i can get photos of the moon very well with my 900mm of zoom.. here is a example.. that photo may or may not be cropped to zoom in closer to the moon, cant remember. but with the canon xs60 you will have a little more zoom than i have.. with the p900 will you have roughly twice the amount of zoom that i have..

hope this will give you some sort of idea about how much zoom you can get with one of those cameras..

 

[soufiej]

Actually that's not correct, it is up to the person in the hotel, house, etc. to close the drapes if they want no one to be able to look in.

I have taken a lot of photos of banks, etc from the street, it's perfectly legal.

Street Photography and the Law: 7 things you need to know
Street Photography and The Law

From your own first link:
2. … but use common sense.
There are certain exceptions to the above generalization, most of them related to a person’s “reasonable expectation of privacy.” For example, if you’re shooting from a public street into someone’s bedroom or bathroom window, you may be crossing an ethical and even legal line. Shooting under public bathroom stalls or up the skirts of passersby is also likely to get you into trouble. Texas even has an “Improper Photography” statute that makes it a felony to photograph a subject “without the other person’s consent … and with intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person.”


Recent court actions say you cannot place the burden of a person’s “reasonable expectation of privacy.” on the individual being photographed.


What may be "legal" doesn't mean you won't be stopped, questioned and possibly detained while the legality of your actions is being determined.

That's all I said, you may be stopped and you may be hauled off and you may be questioned. Counting windows is no longer considered a common sense thing to do in many cases. However, your sense of what is "legal" may not be as common as someone else's idea.

 

[astroNikon]

I routinely take photos of aircraft up to 17 miles away. Thought heavily cropped and IQ suffers.
I've contemplated testing a P900 since they came out which would be the best bang for the buck.

My 2500mm telescope though can't slew fast enough for a jet or the ISS flying overhead, and when I manually hold a long focal length reflex lens I have issues keeping it steady enough (I really need to use a Gimbal).

But the P900 or a similar Canon model would be the best bang for the buck.

 

[soufiej]

... once you start using digital zoom sure you get even more zoom but the image quality goes down the drain so i always turn of the digital zoom on point and shoot cameras.


View attachment 121753

Digital zoom crops the image at the sensor which results in fewer pixels being employed. It all comes down to "usable pixel count". Which, in the end, comes down to how are you going to use the final image.

If the digital zoom function crops down to, say, a usable 10 mega-pixels, that's still more than sufficient resolution for most medium sized prints. How many of us began using digital cameras with fewer usable pixels than that?

If you alter the aspect ratio on your camera away from that of the senor, you've also cropped the image. Now we're arguing over issues that don't really matter IMO.

It's a fairly safe bet anyone interested in counting windows isn't going to be doing so on the 3" LCD display of the camera. If they process the image and crop to a usable pixel count of 10 mega-pixels, there's really very little difference in the final product.

If they shoot in Jepg format, they have given up data points. It's all a game of how much is enough. The op hasn't really told us what they need for their intended usage and what they expect to obtain.

I'd say the larger issue with sharpness of the final image with a superzoom at its long end is going to come down to whether the camera was being hand held or on a tripod.