Submitting articles Mountnit Tany CandlesSubmit quality Articles and reviews

The Nikon 1 J1 is really a stylish compact system camera using a 10-megapixel “CX” format sensor as well as the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Boasting continuous shooting speeds up to 60 fps at full resolution, Full HD video capture, an ultra-fast hybrid auto-focus system, Smart Photo Selector along with a unique Motion Snapshot Mode, the portable Nikon J1 also offers more conventional shooting modes like Programmed Auto, Aperture and Shutter Priority, along with Metered Manual. Also fully briefed can be a built-in pop-up flash having a guide volume of 5, a 3 inch rear display and an electronic shutter. Pricing $649.95 / 549.99 using a 10-30mm contact, $699.95 / 599.99 using a 10mm pancake lens, or $799.95 / 699.99 in a very double-lens kit with all the 10-30mm and 30-110mm zoom lenses, the Nikon 1 J1 is scheduled to be sale later this month.

The Nikon 1 J1 is mostly created from aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts and is therefore heavier than what you know already depending on its size alone, weighing 234g for your body only. In addition, it feels better made versus the official product shots maybe have you believe. Having an essentially grip-less design, the Nikon J1 can be quite much a two-handed affair that will require you to definitely retain the camera’s weight from the left hand, clutching the lens, and use your right hand for balance and operating the controls. A great the good thing the way it can make you pay attention to holding you properly, which often goes a long way towards avoiding shake-induced blur with your photos.

The camera’s clean, minimalist front plate is covered with the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. As an alternative to being a scaled-down version on the traditional F mount, it is a fresh design that delivers 100% electronic communication involving the attached lens as well as the camera body, from a dozen contacts. Just like around the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, we have a white dot for simple lens alignment, even though it has moved from the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) to the top level with the mount. The lenses themselves have a short silver ridge about the lens barrel, which must be in alignment with said dot in order for you to definitely be capable of attach the lens for the camera. Even though this might require a little adjusting to, it actually makes changing lenses quicker and simpler.

Without having lens attached, you can view the sensor sitting directly behind the plane of the bayonet mount. Like the mount itself, the sensor is new. Measuring 13.2×8.8mm this “CX” format imaging chip has double the surface of the biggest imagers found in compact and bridge cameras such as the Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, but only most of the spot of your standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip features a 1.36x longer diagonal than the Nikon CX imager. Considering the fact that Four Thirds incorporates a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” ends up to about 2.72, and therefore a 10mm lens has approximately the identical angle of view as a 27.2mm lens by using an FX or 35mm film camera. The Nikon 1 Nikkor 10-30mm standard zoom is thus equivalent to a 27.2-81.6mm (or, practically speaking, 28-80mm) FX lens when it comes to its angle-of-view range.

All of those other Nikon J1’s faceplate is virtually empty, featuring the lens release, a receiver with the optional ML-L3 infrared remote control, two narrow slits to the microphone each side in the lens, and an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There is not any grip by any means for the front from the Nikon 1 J1.

There are two means of powering about the Nikon 1 J1 and Nikon 1 V1. You may make use of the on/off button sitting near the shutter release or, for those who have a collapsible-barrel contact attached, you can easily press the unlocking button around the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an action that causes you to exchange on automatically. It is an ingenious solution as you have to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes about another - not write home about yet still decent and entirely adequate.

You can frame your shots utilizing the rear screen - there’s no electronic viewfinder as about the V1 model, a vital distinction between both the. The LCD screen can be a three-inch, 460,000-dot display that features wide viewing angles, great definition and accurate colours only so-so visibility in strong daylight. We missed the EVF aided by the J1 alongside the V1, in a choice of bright sunlit conditions or when using the 30-110mm telezoom lens as holding the camera approximately eye-level helped to stabilise the lens and prevent trembling camera.

The control layout is very peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 features a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks a lot of the shooting modes which are usually seen on similar dials - that include P, A, S and M - although it has enough room to allow for them. These modes can be found for the J1 but you ought to dive in the rather long-winded instead of entirely logical menu to find them. The J1’s mode dial just has four settings, Photo, Video, Motion Snapshot and Smart Photo Selector. The four-way controller even offers four functions mapped onto its Up, Right, Down and Left buttons; including AE/AF-Lock, exposure compensation, flash mode and self-timer, respectively. Evidently this is not a bad range of functions, the reality that there is no ISO button will doubtlessly result in a lots of photographers enthusiastic about buying the Nikon J1 to be unhappy.

There is a button about the rear labelled “F” but alas, this isn’t a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it means that you can quickly choose from the continuous shooting modes, when it’s in Video mode it enables you to toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There are 2 more important controls for the back of the camera, including a scroll wheel about the four-way pad and a rocker switch marked using a loupe icon. The scroll wheel is needed to set the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (after you have found them from the menu, that may be), while the rocker switch controls the aperture. The reason it’s a loupe icon alongside it truly is until this control is used to zoom in upon an image to test for critical focus in Playback mode. As a final point, you’ll find four small buttons around the navigation pad, flush contrary to the rear panel in the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.

What exactly are shooting modes about the mode dial information about? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked which has a green camera icon, is where you may wish to be most of the time. Together with the mode dial set to the position, you’ll be able to pick your required exposure mode from the menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a great auto mode where the camera analyses the scene in front of its lens and picks exactly what it thinks will be the right way of any particular one scene. You may also make a choice in the conventional PASM modes, which offer you full menu access plus the ability to manually set the aperture, shutter speed, or both (Program AE Shift can be found in P mode). ISO and white balance may also be manually selected, but only through the menu, as stated earlier.

Of course there’s AWB and auto ISO also, with the latter coming in three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) letting you specify how high you would like the digital camera to visit when the light gets low. Also you can choose between three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, when the camera takes control over what it focusses on (this isn’t an excellent mode to obtain when your default as the camera obviously can’t read your mind and could target something more important than your actual subject); Single Point, in which you can come up considered one of 135 AF points by first hitting OK after which moving the active AF point round the frame using the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, the place you pick your subject, press OK and permit the digital camera to monitor that subject mainly because it moves around, provided that this doesn’t happen leave the frame needless to say.

The Nikon 1 J1 comes with a intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that combines contrast- and phase-difference detection in a similar fashion because Fujifilm F300EXR did. This gives the Nikon 1 J1 to concentrate extremely quickly in good light, even with a moving subject. The business claims the Nikon 1 system cameras would be the fastest-focusing machines on earth, which matches our experience - so long as there’s enough light. When light levels drop, you switches to contrast-detect AF which, though faster than you are on most cameras, isn’t as fast as the other method. It is usually the digital camera that decides which AF approach to use - the user doesn’t have any relation to this.

Normally, the J1 will usually only resort to contrast detection when light levels are low. In good light, we had been capable of taking sharp photos of fast-moving subjects. The Nikon J1 certainly doesn’t disappoint here. Manual focusing can also be possible, although Nikon 1 lenses do not possess focus rings. If you want to focus manually, you first of all ought to hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK then use the scroll wheel to modify focus. To help you out with this, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central section of the image and displays a rudimentary focus scale along the right side with the frame - but those would be the only focusing aids you get. There is no peaking function available as on some rival models.

The J1 comes with a electronic shutter (the V1 also offers a mechanical shutter). It is absolutely silent (the target confirmation beep is usually disabled from the menu) and allows the usage of shutter speeds as soon as 1/16,000th of your second and, using the Electronic Hi setting selected, permits you to shoot full-resolution stills at 60 fps. Note however that while that is a major achievement, it’s restricted by a buffer that may only hold 12 raw files. Additionally, the usage of this mode precludes AF tracking - you must lower the frame rate to 10fps if you want that -, along with the viewfinder goes blank whilst the pictures are increasingly being taken. Single thing that it application we can think of where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really come in handy is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. Only at that rate, a number of 5 bracketed shots may very well be consumed in a lot less than 0.1 second, rendering small movements that could otherwise pose alignment problems - like leaves being blown inside the wind - a non-issue. Alas, the Nikon J1 won’t offer a real feature - in truth this doesn’t offer autoexposure bracketing in any way.

Selling it to it mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. Most notably, you might be set to shoot Full HD footage, and you even arrive at select from 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, determined by whether you prefer to work together with progressive or interlaced video. Unless you need Full HD, in addition there are 720p @ 60fps, and that is really smooth nevertheless counts as hd. Secondly, you have full manual treating exposure in video mode. It is an option; you won’t have to shoot in M mode however you can if that’s things you need. Thirdly, you have fast, continuous AF in video mode, and delay well, especially in good light. Movies are compressed with all the H.264 codec and stored as MOV files. You can find separate shutter release buttons for stills and video, and because of this - and also the massive processing power with the Nikon J1 - you are able to take multiple full-resolution stills even while recording HD video. This works the other way round too - you can capture a show clip regardless of whether the mode dial is within the Still Image position, just by pressing the red movie shutter release. We’ve found out that in such cases the digital camera will forever record the playback quality at 720p/60fps.

In addition to being efficient at shooting regular movies in HD quality, the Nikon 1 J1 may also shoot video at 400fps for slow-motion playback. The resolution is lower plus the aspect ratio is definitely an ultra-widescreen 2.67:1, nevertheless the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo and stuff like that. These videos are played back at 30fps, and that is a lot more than 13x slower as opposed to capture speed of 400fps, permitting you to get creative and prove to the world numerous interesting phenomena which happen straight away to look at in real time. The Nikon J1 goes a step forward by providing a 1200fps video mode, nevertheless the resolution and overall quality is too poor for the to be genuinely useful.

The 3rd icon around the mode dial stands for Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows the digital camera to capture no less than 20 photos in a single press with the shutter release, including some which were taken before fully depressing the button. The digital camera analyses the individual pictures inside series and discards 15 of these, keeping exactly the five it thinks are best with regards to sharpness and composition. This feature is usually genuinely useful when photographing fast action and fleeting moments.

Finally, you will find there’s so-called Motion Snapshot mode where the camera records a brief high-definition movie - whose buffering starts in a half-press from the shutter release, so again includes events that had happened prior to the button was fully depressed - as well as uses a still photograph. The film as well as the still image are held in separate files even so the camera can combine them right into a single slow-motion clip with vocals. It’s fun but we can’t really envision people by using this shooting mode often. (Should you look at the video on a computer, it is going to play back at normal speed, without sound, so this mode is basically only interesting when you observe the clip in-camera or hook the digital camera as much as an HDTV by using an HDMI cable.)

The Nikon J1 stores photos and videos on SD/SDHC/SDXC memory cards, and props up fastest UHS-I speed class. You runs on a compact EN-EL20 battery to its V1 your government, and it is consequently capable of producing considerably less shots for a passing fancy charge, managing around 230, eventhough it helps to generate the camera body scaled-down. The camera’s tripod socket is made from metal and it is positioned in line while using lens’ optical axis. And also this means that changing batteries or cards isn’t feasible while the J1 is attached with a tripod, as being the hinges from the battery/card compartment door are way too near to the tripod mount.

So, how did we love to utilizing the Nikon 1 J1? On one hand, we liked it a lot. In good light, its auto-focus system is indeed faster than virtually anything we’ve used to date, having the ability to track and lock target numerous truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding a great deal of sharp images in situations where our keeper rates have not been very good. Additionally, its high-speed continuous shooting modes have allowed us to capture interesting moments that we’d have surely missed whenever we had used a slower camera. The built-in pop-up flash proved more useful the reason is modest guide number might suggest, together with the clever design minimising red-eye.

On the other hand, the Nikon J1 have their own share of frustrating idiosyncrasies applying the person interface that forces you to dive in the menu to gain access to functions as basic as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons with a finished product, they may a minimum of have the “F” button customisable via a firmware update. Also, you will find an avid button for exposure compensation - the industry a valuable thing - Some be capable of activate a live histogram, community . can have made exposure compensation additional useful and simple to utilize. Again, this can likely to end up fixed in firmware.

We also missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, specifically in bright light or aided by the telephoto lens which doesn’t lend itself well to being held out at arms length. The J1 merely has a glass dust shield since it is defense against unwanted debris, as opposed to the more proactive sensor cleaning unit how the V1 offers, as well as the smaller battery means that you will have to buy an extra one to arrive at the day’s heavy shooting. The possible lack of an accessory port implies that almost not one of the Nikon 1 accessories are compatible with the J1, including the external flash and GPS unit.

One more thing we wouldn’t like could be that the camera would always show the picture just taken for a couple seconds onscreen, so we would not are able to turn this instant postview function completely off (although you can at any rate cancel it with a half-press of the shutter release). Finally, as you move the camera is usually fast and responsive, your camera takes excessively long to arise from sleep mode if this is idle for some time, resulting in several missed shots.

With that said, the Nikon 1 J1 is often a smaller than average and compact, high-performance system camera that like its larger would use a couple of tweaks to the user interface to increase suit the requirements serious amateurs. The intended target market of casual users will require to it due to the sheer speed, built-in flash, compact size and also the fun features it provides. Why don’t we now observe how the Nikon 1 J1 fared from the image quality department.