Aye I agree. It's just interesting how despite all this advancements with kens power and reach, the quality of one of these new ones, say pick the canon sx60 HS as it does raw.. Still probably won't beat a 10 year old canon 350D with a reasonably basic 70-300 lens. Some things have advanced massively.. But to a real world effect or is it just a numbers and "my kens is bigger than yours" kind of situation now..
Its all a question of 'perspectve'; most of the 'advances' in camera technology in the last century, have done little to expand the envelope of possibility or lift the level of achieveable 'quality'...
The pioneers were taking full-frame photo's of the moon over 150 years ago; full-colour photographs were being shot at almost the same time. High resolution images, were being captured on 10x8 inch 'plate' cameras, and continued to deliver resolutions far beyond that acheveable by 'ameteurs' with smaller format cameras, right up until the modern era.
The greatest 'advances' in camera technology in the last hundred years has NOT beein in making better photographs, but in putting the equipment to make 'acceptable' quality images into the hands and pockets of joe-public in the street ameurs.
And the most significant way that this has been achieved, has simply by making cameras smaller.
The standards we stll work to were significantly established with the boom in 35mm film photography from the 1960's on, when the smaller film size allowed camera's to be made almost half the size, and need 1/4 the expensive chemicals and materials to make and make photo's; hence 'cheaper' and more compact, easier to carry and use.
It has only been in the last decade that digital cameras have started to regularly offer the same 'acceptable quality level' of 35mm film, and even high end digital start to challenge the ultimate quality that migh be achieved with medium or large format film.
As to the question of 'zoom' as a measure of technological advancement? Very mute debate really, and rather like miga-pixel counting, of little real relevence to taking 'better' photo's.
Idea that a bridge camera with 20 or even 50x 'zoom' is some-how 'better' or more 'advanced', than the 3x'zoom' offered by an early 70-210mm 'long' zoom for a 35mm film camera, is rather querilouse.
Frame size for 35mm film is 24x36mm; 'half-frame' or APS-Crop film/digital sensor sze is 16x24mm, giving a 1.5x crop-factor increase in effectve 'reach' for any lens. Shrink the frame/sensor size down further, and even a 'big' sensor in a bridge camera is likely no more than '1/4 frame, 8x12mm, giving at least a 2x 'zoom-magnifying' crop factor; Sensors used in lower end bridge or compacts, action-cams & smart-phones tend to be even smaller, and have a crop factor as much as maybe 8 or 10x.
This pulls the 'normal' angle of view down to rediculousely short focal lengths; maybe as little as 5mm instead of 50mm! So if you can reletively easily make a lens with perhaps 40mm, on a 'full-frame' 35mm camera, that would only just about offer you very cncervative by modern dtandards, 3x zoom from maybe 30-70mm, around the 'normal' angle of view. But put that infront of a micro-sensor for a consumer-compact, where the 'normal angle' is provided by a 5mm focal length, that same, 40mm of 'travel' can take you from perhaps 4mm to 44mm, a much more 'impressive' 11x zoom.
And it's a double, if not tripple, whammy; if you fit a lens 'optimised' for a 35mm film camera on a crop-sensor DSLR, the sensor only captures the image from the centre of the image circle; it 'crops' off the corners and edges, and hence 'looses' a lot of the edge aboratons and distortions that effect image quality. This is one of the reasons, that lenses for crop-sensor DSLR's tend to be that much cheaper tha for full-frame DSLR's, and same 'ecconomics' apply when going even smaller for smaller sensor bridge or compacts
Other 'whammy', is to do with Depth-of-Field; as focal length degreases, (for given camera to subject focal dstance) so the Depth of Field, around the subject 'increases'. This reduces focus criticality, meaning that auto-focus mechanism's dont have to be as precice, and tends to increase percieved 'sharpness', giving a illusion of better mage resolution.
Or in short; making sensors smaller, makes making cameras 'easier' and 'cheaper' for any given level of percieved 'aceptable image quality'... doesn't neceserily make them a 'better-camera', let alone support the mis-conception that better cameras take better photo's!
The big zoom factors, and big pixel counts basted by so many contemprary 'consumer' compact & bridge camera's, are to my mnd little more than sales gimmicks.
For almost all practical purposes, ever since my very first 1.3Mpixel compact camera, 13 years ago, I have had to shrink the pixel-size from what the camera can deliver, to print or display! The 24Mpix offered by my DSLR now, then doesn't really do much to help me make 'better' pctures! Especially if I dont have anything interesting to point it at!
While BIG zoom? Well... Many moons ago (pun!) I bought a 3x tele-converter for something daft like 50p from the bargain bin in the camera shop to fit my M42 screw fit 35mm film cameras. That baged my 300mm prime tele-photo out to a wopping 900mm to get almost frame filling moon-shots! But even with the stablity provided by shear mass of an old lead-loaded Zenith, it was NOT a set-up you were going to get sharp shots 'hand-holding'!!
Few years back, the O/H bought a 21x zoom 'Bridge' as a carry-about; actual lens spec is 4.5mm-94mm, 25-425mm '35mm equivilent', which is pretty impressive, and more than covers the 28-300mm range I had for my flm cameras with two or three seperate lenses; and close enough to the 27-450mm 'equivilent' range I have on DSLR from 'kit' 18-55 & 55-300's... but even there, I rarely use more than about 200 on the big-zoom, and again, hand-holding, even with a larger, heavier more stable camera, and a practiced steady-hand; it's not condusive to blurr-free images, hand-holding. The smaller lighter, less stable 'bridge' at that sort of 'reach' is almost mpossible to hand-hold and get un-fuzzy photo's in all but the 'best' light, and even then, still a bt ht and miss; and ulike the DSLR you can use on a tripod with remote release; Bridge only has a self timer to put to the task.
Like the pixel-count, its largely a 'redundant-feature' to all practical purposes, more use to sales-man flogging cameras on the numbers rather than any-one wanting to take better photo's.
And in THAT, there is an irony to ALL these suggested 'advances'..... go back quarter of a century, and a half decent 35mm 'consumer compact', with a fixed, usually 35mm lens, but a 'full-frame' sensor, replenished every photo, could often deliver pictures as good or better in terms of image quality as a 35mm SLR... and you could slip it in your pocket!
I have a much vanted Olympus 35mm XA2 'clam-shell-compact' for over 30 years; it still fts in my pocket; it still delivers 'full-frame' quality photo's, that even scanned on an almost 20-year old film-scanner, have almost 10Mpix resolution I still have to shrink to display! Which as a 'pocketeable' carry-around,gets far more 'outings' than the 'bridge', for all that's suggested 'technical advancement' and consumer-usefulness.. because despite what the specs suggest on the box.. practically it just ENT 'more useful'..
Like I said, the very idea of "Advances" are pretty subjective.
The other issue is size, on a teeny tiny sensor like in the P900 the lens doesn't have to be very big to cover it, but the bigger the sensor the bigger then lens which is why realistically anything over a 600mm lens becomes impractical. But I'd choose 600mm on a modern DSLR over 1200mm on a bridge camera all day long. And that's just based on IQ without then getting into autofocus systems, metering etc etc.
Leaf cutter Bee (uncropped). 12th-September-2015.
Ivy Bee (Colletes hederae) garden photo (uncropped). 15th-September-2015.
Migrant Hawker Dragonflies, in Cop. Macro/close up (uncropped). 4th-October-2015.
Hornet feeding on Ivy. 13th-October-2015.
Heath Fritillary Butterfly. 7th-June-2015.