I sometimes take pictures as I kayak streams, wetlands and waterways & I found I can take a really long distance picture with a relatively cheap camera. The top duck picture was taken at 12 x zoom at high resolution and still isn't very close. The ducks were so far away that I could only see some motion in the water. Then I took the 12 x zoom picture blew it up in Photoshop and I got the picture at the bottom.