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The Nikon 1 J1 is a stylish compact system camera which has a 10-megapixel “CX” format sensor along with the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Boasting continuous shooting speeds of up to 60 frames per second at full resolution, Full HD video capture, an ultra-fast hybrid auto-focus system, Smart Photo Selector and a unique Motion Snapshot Mode, the portable Nikon J1 also provides more conventional shooting modes like Programmed Auto, Aperture and Shutter Priority, along with Metered Manual. Also aboard is really a built-in pop-up flash which has a guide variety of 5, a 3 inch rear display plus an electronic shutter. Coming in at $649.95 / 549.99 having a 10-30mm zoom lens, $699.95 / 599.99 with a 10mm pancake lens, or $799.95 / 699.99 in a very double-lens kit with 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 certainly caused by made out of aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts and is particularly therefore heavier than what you know already determined by its size alone, weighing in at 234g for that body only. What’s more, it feels better quality than the official product shots maybe have you believe. With the essentially grip-less design, the Nikon J1 is quite much a two-handed affair that really needs that you retain the camera’s weight within the left hand, clutching the lens, and rehearse your right hand for balance and operating the controls. A great an excellent the way it makes you be aware of holding you properly, which inturn goes a considerable ways towards avoiding shake-induced blur as part of your photos.

The camera’s clean, minimalist front plate is covered with the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Instead of to be a scaled-down version from the out of date F mount, it is just a fresh design that provides 100% electronic communication between your attached lens and also the camera body, courtesy of twelve contacts. Exactly like within the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, we have a white dot for easy lens alignment, eventhough it has moved on the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) to the top level in the mount. The lenses themselves feature a short silver ridge within the lens barrel, which must be in alignment with said dot in order for you to definitely have the capacity to attach the lens to the camera. Although this may require a certain amount of getting used to, this task makes changing lenses quicker and simpler.

Without the need of lens attached, you will notice the sensor sitting right behind the plane from the bayonet mount. Such as mount itself, the sensor is brand-new. Measuring 13.2×8.8mm this “CX” format imaging chip has double surface area of the biggest imagers utilised in compact and bridge cameras such as Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, only about 50 % of the area of an standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip has a 1.36x longer diagonal versus the Nikon CX imager. Provided that Four Thirds features a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” breaks down to to around 2.72, which means a 10mm lens has approximately exactly the same angle of view to be a 27.2mm lens on an FX or 35mm film camera. The Nikon 1 Nikkor 10-30mm standard zoom is thus equal to a 27.2-81.6mm (or, practically speaking, 28-80mm) FX lens regarding its angle-of-view range.

All of those other Nikon J1’s faceplate is almost empty, featuring merely the lens release, a receiver to the optional ML-L3 infrared handheld control, two narrow slits with the microphone each side of the lens, plus an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There’s no grip by any means within the front of the Nikon 1 J1.

There are two methods for powering within the Nikon 1 J1. You can make use of the on/off button sitting near the shutter release or, should you have a collapsible-barrel the len’s attached, you can simply press the unlocking button for the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an act that triggers the camera to change on automatically. It becomes an ingenious solution because you require to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes about a 2nd - nothing to write home about yet still decent and entirely adequate.

You’ll be able to frame your shots while using the rear screen - there isn’t any electronic viewfinder as for the V1 model, an important distinction between the 2 main. The LCD screen is usually a three-inch, 460,000-dot display that features wide viewing angles, great definition and accurate colours but only so-so visibility in strong daylight. We missed the EVF with the J1 alongside the V1, in either bright sunlit conditions or with the 30-110mm telezoom lens as holding your camera nearly eye-level helped to stabilise the lens and prevent trembling camera.

The control layout is rather peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 incorporates a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks the majority of the shooting modes which are usually found on similar dials - especially P, A, S and M - though it has enough room to allow for them. These modes can be found within the J1 but you need to dive into your rather long-winded and never entirely logical menu to get them. The J1’s mode dial only has four settings, Photo, Video, Motion Snapshot and Smart Photo Selector. The four-way controller has four functions mapped onto its Up, Right, Down and Left buttons; including AE/AF-Lock, exposure compensation, flash mode and self-timer, respectively. Of course this isn’t a bad range of functions, the belief that there isn’t any ISO button will doubtlessly create a great deal of photographers enthusiastic about getting the Nikon J1 for being unhappy.

You will find there’s button around the rear labelled “F” but alas, this isn’t a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it lets you quickly choose from the continuous shooting modes, during Video mode it permits you to toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There are two more essential controls for the back from the camera, together with a scroll wheel across the four-way pad and a rocker switch marked with a loupe icon. The scroll wheel is employed to create the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (once you have found them inside the menu, that’s), while the rocker switch controls the aperture. Precisely why it offers a loupe icon next to it can be that this control is utilized to focus with an image to evaluate for critical focus in Playback mode. Last but not least, you will find four small buttons across the navigation pad, flush resistant to the rear panel of the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.

What exactly are the ones shooting modes on the mode dial about? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked using a green camera icon, is where you will want to be more often than not. While using mode dial set for this position, it is possible to pick your required exposure mode in the menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a smart automatic mode the place that the camera analyses the scene before its lens and picks just what it thinks would be the right way of that one scene. Also you can choose one from the conventional PASM modes, which supply you with full menu access and the ability to manually set the aperture, shutter speed, or both (Program AE Shift will come in P mode). ISO and white balance may also be manually selected, but only from the menu, as already mentioned.

Of course there’s AWB and auto ISO also, together with the latter being released three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) letting you specify how high you want the digital camera to look if your light gets low. It’s also possible to choose from three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, when the camera takes control of what it really focusses on (this is not an incredible mode to own since your default as being the camera obviously can’t read your thoughts and may give attention to something else than your actual subject); Single Point, the place you can select certainly one of 135 AF points frist by hitting OK and then moving the active AF point throughout the frame using the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, that you pick your subject, press OK and let you in order to that subject because it moves around, providing doesn’t necessarily leave the frame needless to say.

The Nikon 1 J1 comes with an intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that mixes contrast- and phase-difference detection likewise because Fujifilm F300EXR did. This enables the Nikon 1 J1 to focus extremely quickly in good light, even using a moving subject. The company claims the Nikon 1 system cameras include the fastest-focusing machines on this planet, and this also matches our experience - as long as there’s enough light. When light levels drop, your camera switches to contrast-detect AF which, though faster than you are on most cameras, isn’t as quickly as another method. It certainly is the digital camera that decides which AF approach to use - the consumer doesn’t have any influence on this.

Generally speaking, the J1 in most cases only make use of contrast detection when light levels are low. In good light, there we were capable of taking sharp photos of fast-moving subjects. The Nikon J1 certainly will not disappoint here. Manual focusing can be possible, even though Nikon 1 lenses don’t have focus rings. If you wish to focus manually, you initially need to hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK and after that use the scroll wheel to modify focus. To help you using this, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central the main image and displays a rudimentary focus scale across the right side on the frame - but those include the only focusing aids you get. There isn’t any peaking function available as on some rival models.

The J1 posseses an electronic shutter (the V1 boasts a mechanical shutter). It’s totally silent (the attention confirmation beep is usually disabled from your menu) and allows the usage of shutter speeds you wish 1/16,000th of the second and, with all the Electronic Hi setting selected, lets you shoot full-resolution stills at 60 frames per second. Note however that although this can be a major achievement, it’s on a a buffer that will 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 -, and the viewfinder goes blank as you move the pictures will be taken. The linksys e2000 application we can think about where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really come in useful is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. With this rate, some 5 bracketed shots may be taken in a lot less than 0.1 second, rendering small movements that could otherwise pose alignment problems - like leaves being blown within the wind - a non-issue. Alas, the Nikon J1 doesn’t offer this kind of feature - in reality it doesn’t offer autoexposure bracketing whatsoever.

Moving on to the recording mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. First of all, your camera is usually set to shoot Full HD footage, therefore you even arrive at choose between 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, depending on whether you would like to work with progressive or interlaced video. Unless you need Full HD, additionally, there are 720p @ 60fps, that’s really smooth whilst still being counts as high definition. Secondly, you get full manual treating exposure in video mode. It is an option; you won’t need to shoot in M mode and you can if that is what exactly you need. Thirdly, you receive fast, continuous AF in video mode, and delay well, specifically in good light. Movies are compressed while using H.264 codec and stored as MOV files. There are separate shutter release buttons for stills and video, and because of this - and also the massive processing power on the Nikon J1 - you can take multiple full-resolution stills whilst recording HD video. This works in reversed order too - you can capture a motion picture clip even though the mode dial is in the Still Image position, just by pressing the red movie shutter release. We’ve found that in this case the camera will invariably record it at 720p/60fps.

And also competent at shooting regular movies in HD quality, the Nikon 1 J1 can 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, however the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo and the like. These videos are played back at 30fps, which can be over 13x slower as opposed to capture speed of 400fps, enabling you to get creative and display to the world a range of interesting phenomena which happen straight away to see or watch instantly. The Nikon J1 goes even more by giving a 1200fps video mode, nevertheless the resolution and overall quality is just too poor with the being genuinely useful.

The 3rd icon about the mode dial is short for Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows you to capture at the least 20 photos with a single press in the shutter release, including some that had been taken before fully depressing the button. The digital camera analyses anyone pictures from the series and discards 15 of those, keeping the five that it thinks would be better when it comes to sharpness and composition. This feature can be genuinely useful when photographing fast action and fleeting moments.

Finally, there exists a so-called Motion Snapshot mode in which the camera records a short high-definition movie - whose buffering starts at a half-press in the shutter release, so again includes events which have happened prior to a button was fully depressed - as well as requires a still photograph. The film along with the still image are stored in separate files but the camera can combine them into a single slow-motion clip with vocals. It’s fun but we can not really envision people employing this shooting mode all the time. (In case you see the video on the computer, it’s going to play back at normal speed, without sound, which means this mode is actually only interesting should you see the clip in-camera or hook the digital camera around an HDTV with an HDMI cable.)

The Nikon J1 stores photos and videos on SD/SDHC/SDXC memory cards, and props up the fastest UHS-I speed class. The digital camera runs using an inferior EN-EL20 battery to the V1 your government, and it is consequently capable of producing considerably less shots using one charge, managing around 230, while it helps to create your camera body smaller. The camera’s tripod socket consists of metal and is situated line while using lens’ optical axis. This also shows that changing batteries or cards isn’t feasible as you move the J1 is placed on a tripod, since the hinges in the battery/card compartment door are far too towards the tripod mount.

So, how did we love to using the Nikon 1 J1? On one hand, we liked it a great deal. In good light, its auto-focus product is indeed faster than virtually anything we’ve used up to now, the ability to track and lock concentrate on an array of truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding a great deal of sharp images in situations where our keeper rates never been high. Additionally, its high-speed continuous shooting modes have allowed us to capture interesting moments that we’d have surely missed when we had used a slower camera. The built-in pop-up flash proved more useful that the modest guide number might suggest, together with the clever design minimising red-eye.

Alternatively, the Nikon J1 have their share of frustrating idiosyncrasies beginning with anyone interface that forces you to dive in the menu to reach functions as basic as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons into a finished product, they are able to at the very least have the “F” button customisable via a firmware update. Also, as there is an avid button for exposure compensation - the a valuable thing - I didn’t find a way to activate a live histogram, though it would’ve made exposure compensation considerably more useful and easy to utilize. Again, this may likely to end up fixed in firmware.

We missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, particularly in bright light or with the telephoto lens which doesn’t lend itself well to being held out at arms length. The J1 merely has a glass dust shield as it’s defense against unwanted debris, rather than the more proactive sensor cleaning unit the V1 offers, as well as the smaller battery ensures that you should buy an additional you to definitely go through the day’s heavy shooting. Deficiency of an accessory port implies that almost none of the Nikon 1 accessories are works with the J1, such as external flash and GPS unit.

Another thing we didn’t like was that the camera would always show the photo just taken for some seconds onscreen, and that we failed to be capable of turn this instant postview function completely off (even if you can at least cancel it by way of a half-press in the shutter release). Finally, as the camera is generally fast and responsive, the digital camera takes overly long to arise from sleep mode in the event it has been idle for a short time, leading to numerous missed shots.

Of course, the Nikon 1 J1 is a small and compact, high-performance system camera they enjoy its our government are able to use a couple of tweaks to its user interface to improve suit the needs of serious amateurs. The intended market you work in of casual users will enjoy it due to the sheer speed, built-in flash, compact size plus the fun features there is. We will now discover how the Nikon 1 J1 fared inside image quality department.