Writeup on Nikon 1 J1: Innovative Nikon Mirroless Digital cameras
The Nikon 1 J1 is usually a stylish compact system camera featuring a 10-megapixel “CX” format sensor along with the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Boasting continuous shooting speeds of 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 offers more conventional shooting modes like Programmed Auto, Aperture and Shutter Priority, in addition to Metered Manual. Also aboard is usually a built-in pop-up flash using a guide amount of 5, a 3 inch rear display as well as an electronic shutter. Charging $649.95 / 549.99 having a 10-30mm zoom lens, $699.95 / 599.99 having a 10mm pancake lens, or $799.95 / 699.99 inside a double-lens kit together with the 10-30mm and 30-110mm zoom lenses, the Nikon 1 J1 is scheduled to be on sale later this month.
The Nikon 1 J1 is usually constructed from aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts and it is therefore heavier than you would think determined by its size alone, coming in at 234g for the body only. It also feels better quality than the official product shots maybe have you believe. With an essentially grip-less design, the Nikon J1 is quite much a two-handed affair that will need one to support the camera’s weight in the left-hand, clutching the lens, and make use of your right hand for balance and operating the controls. This is certainly an excellent since it pushes you to look closely at holding your camera properly, which often goes quite a distance towards avoiding shake-induced blur inside your photos.
The camera’s clean, minimalist front plate is covered with the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Rather than to be a scaled-down version of the traditional F mount, it is just a brand spanking new design that delivers 100% electronic communication between attached lens and also the camera body, courtesy of a dozen contacts. Similar to on the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, there is a white dot for easy lens alignment, though it has moved from your 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) to the top level from the mount. The lenses themselves use a short silver ridge within the lens barrel, which should be in alignment with said dot to enable one to manage to attach the lens on the camera. Of course this may require a little bit of adjusting to, this task makes changing lenses quicker and easier.
Without the need of lens attached, you will see the sensor sitting directly behind the plane from the bayonet mount. Such as mount itself, the sensor is fresh. Measuring 13.2×8.8mm this “CX” format imaging chip has double the amount expanse of the largest imagers utilized in compact and bridge cameras much like the Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, but only about half the location of your standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip includes a 1.36x longer diagonal than the Nikon CX imager. Since Four Thirds includes a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” computes to about 2.72, which means that a 10mm lens has approximately the same angle of view being a 27.2mm lens upon an FX or 35mm film camera. The Nikon 1 Nikkor 10-30mm standard zoom is thus similar to a 27.2-81.6mm (or, practically speaking, 28-80mm) FX lens regarding its angle-of-view range.
The rest of the Nikon J1’s faceplate is almost empty, featuring only the lens release, a receiver for the optional ML-L3 infrared remote device, two narrow slits for the microphone spare on both in the lens, along with an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There is no grip by any means about the front on the Nikon 1 J1.
There are 2 means of powering within the Nikon 1 V1. You can utilize on/off button sitting next to the shutter release or, should you have a collapsible-barrel contact lens attached, you can easily press the unlocking button for the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an action that triggers you to interchange on automatically. It is deemed an ingenious solution since you need to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes approximately an additional - nothing to write home about but nevertheless decent and entirely adequate.
You are able to frame your shots using the rear screen - there is no electronic viewfinder as around the V1 model, an essential difference between the two. The LCD screen can be a three-inch, 460,000-dot display that boasts wide viewing angles, great definition and accurate colours only so-so visibility in strong daylight. We missed the EVF with the J1 alongside the V1, in a choice of bright sunlit conditions or with the 30-110mm telezoom lens as holding the digital camera up to 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 most of the shooting modes that are usually entirely on similar dials - such as P, A, S and M - although it has enough room to support them. These modes can be obtained within the J1 however you must dive in the rather long-winded and never entirely logical menu to find them. The J1’s mode dial has only 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 is not a bad choice of functions, the belief that there is absolutely no ISO button will doubtlessly cause a lot of photographers thinking about purchasing the Nikon J1 to become unhappy.
There exists a button around the rear labelled “F” but alas, this is not a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it means that you can quickly select from the continuous shooting modes, when it is in Video mode it helps you to toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There’s 2 more important controls for the back of the camera, including a scroll wheel throughout the four-way pad and also a rocker switch marked with a loupe icon. The scroll wheel is utilized to create the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (after you have found them from the menu, that is), as the rocker switch controls the aperture. The reason why it’s a loupe icon alongside it can be that it control can be used to zoom in on an image to test for critical focus in Playback mode. Finally, there are four small buttons across the navigation pad, flush up against the rear panel with the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.
So what are the types shooting modes within the mode dial information about? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked having a green camera icon, is the place you will want to be most of the time. Using the mode dial set to the position, you are able to pick your required exposure mode in the menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a smart auto mode the place that the camera analyses the scene before its lens and picks just what it thinks could be the right way of any particular one scene. You can even pick one on 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 comes in P mode). ISO and white balance can even be manually selected, but only from your menu, as stated earlier.
Obviously there’s AWB and auto ISO also, with all the latter coming in three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) enabling you to specify how high you want you to look when the light gets low. You can also select from three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, the location where the camera takes management of just what it focusses on (this isn’t a fantastic mode to possess as your default since the camera obviously can’t read your head and may consentrate on something else entirely than your actual subject); Single Point, that you can decide one of 135 AF points beginning with hitting OK and then moving the active AF point round the frame using the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, in which you pick your subject, press OK and enable your camera to track that subject since it moves around, so long as doesn’t necessarily leave the frame of course.
The Nikon 1 J1 comes with a intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that mixes contrast- and phase-difference detection similarly as the Fujifilm F300EXR did. This allows the Nikon 1 J1 to focus extremely quickly in good light, even on the moving subject. The corporation claims the Nikon 1 system cameras include the fastest-focusing machines on the globe, which matches our experience - provided that 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 nearly you’d like additional method. It is usually the digital camera that decides which AF technique to use - the user doesn’t have impact on this.
Normally, the J1 will most likely only head for 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 won’t disappoint here. Manual focusing can also be possible, although the Nikon 1 lenses would not have focus rings. If you need to focus manually, you initially have to hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK and then utilize scroll wheel to regulate focus. To help you out using this, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central part of the image and displays a rudimentary focus scale along the right side from the frame - but those are definitely the only focusing helps you get. There isn’t any peaking function available as on some rival models.
The J1 has a electronic shutter (the V1 also offers an analog shutter). It’s totally silent (the focus confirmation beep might be disabled in the menu) and allows the usage of shutter speeds you’d like 1/16,000th of any second and, with the Electronic Hi setting selected, enables you to shoot full-resolution stills at 60 fps. Note however that while that is a major achievement, it’s on a a buffer that can only hold 12 raw files. Additionally, the use of this mode precludes AF tracking - you will need to lower the frame rate to 10fps if you need that -, and also the viewfinder goes blank while the pictures are now being taken. About the only application you can visualize where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really prove useful is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. When it reaches this rate, a series of 5 bracketed shots may be used a lot less than 0.1 second, rendering small movements that could otherwise pose alignment problems - like leaves being blown in the wind - a non-issue. Alas, the Nikon J1 won’t offer this type of feature - the truth is no offer autoexposure bracketing at all.
Trying out the video mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. First and foremost, the digital camera may be set to shoot Full HD footage, so you even are able to choose between 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, based on whether you’d rather use progressive or interlaced video. If you do not need Full HD, in addition there are 720p @ 60fps, which is really smooth but still counts as hi-def. Secondly, you will get full manual control over exposure in video mode. It becomes an option; you won’t have to shoot in M mode but you can if that is what you need. Thirdly, you have fast, continuous AF in video mode, and it works well, specifically in good light. Movies are compressed while using the H.264 codec and stored as MOV files. You will discover separate shutter release buttons for stills and video, and due to this - as well as the massive processing power from the Nikon J1 - it is possible to take multiple full-resolution stills even when recording HD video. This works in reversed order too - you’ll be able to capture a show clip regardless if the mode dial influences Still Image position, merely by pressing the red movie shutter release. We’ve discovered that in cases like this the camera will invariably record the playback quality at 720p/60fps.
As well as being able to shooting regular movies in HD quality, the Nikon 1 J1 also can shoot video at 400fps for slow-motion playback. The resolution is less and the aspect ratio can be an ultra-widescreen 2.67:1, though the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo etc. These videos are played back at 30fps, and that is greater than 13x slower than the capture speed of 400fps, letting you get creative and show the world an array of interesting phenomena which happen too rapidly to watch in real time. The Nikon J1 goes even more by providing a 1200fps video mode, however the resolution and overall quality is way too poor for that for being genuinely useful.
The next icon on the mode dial is short for Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows your camera to capture no less than 20 photos for a single press of the shutter release, including some that have been taken before fully depressing the button. You analyses the consumer pictures inside series and discards 15 of them, keeping merely the five that it thinks would be best with regard to sharpness and composition. This feature may be genuinely useful when photographing fast action and fleeting moments.
Finally, there’s a so-called Motion Snapshot mode where the camera records a short high-definition movie - whose buffering starts for a half-press with the shutter release, so again includes events which had happened prior to button was fully depressed - plus takes a still photograph. The film as well as the still image are stored in separate files though the camera can combine them in to a single slow-motion clip with background music. It’s fun but we not able to really envision people making use of this shooting mode regularly. (In case you observe the video on a computer, it’ll play back at normal speed, without sound, which means this mode is really only interesting in case you comprehend the clip in-camera or hook your camera as much as an HDTV through an HDMI cable.)
The Nikon J1 stores photos and videos on SD/SDHC/SDXC memory cards, and supports the fastest UHS-I speed class. The digital camera is run on a lesser EN-EL20 battery to the V1 big brother, and is also consequently able to produce even less shots using one charge, managing around 230, although it does help to make the digital camera body more compact. The camera’s tripod socket is manufactured out of metal which is in line with the lens’ optical axis. This implies that changing batteries or cards is not possible while the J1 is placed on a tripod, because the hinges from the battery/card compartment door are way too nearby the tripod mount.
So, how did we love to using the Nikon 1 J1? Similarly, we liked it lots. In good light, its auto-focus product is indeed faster than basically anything we’ve used to date, being able to track and lock give attention to a selection of truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding a lot of sharp images in situations where our keeper rates have never been high. Additionally, its high-speed continuous shooting modes have allowed us to capture interesting moments that we’d have surely missed as we had used a slower camera. The built-in pop-up flash proved more useful that its modest guide number might suggest, with the clever design minimising red-eye.
Conversely, the Nikon J1 have their share of frustrating idiosyncrasies you start with an individual interface that pushes you to dive into your menu to reach functions as basic as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons to your finished product, they are able to a minimum of make the “F” button customisable using a firmware update. Also, you will find a separate button for exposure compensation - the industry advantage - Some are able to activate a live histogram, though it would’ve made exposure compensation considerably more useful and easy to use. Again, this may apt to be fixed in firmware.
We missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, particularly bright light or with the telephoto lens which does not lend itself well to being held out at arms length. The J1 merely has a glass dust shield because it is defense against unwanted debris, as opposed to the more proactive sensor cleaning unit that this V1 offers, plus the smaller battery means that you’ll need to buy another anyone to get to the day’s heavy shooting. Deficiency of an accessory port implies that almost no Nikon 1 accessories are compatible with the J1, including the external flash and GPS unit.
Yet another thing we would not like could be that the camera would always show the photo just taken for a few seconds onscreen, and we wouldn’t find a way to turn this instant postview function completely off (even though you can at least cancel it via a half-press from the shutter release). Finally, even though the camera is usually fast and responsive, you takes way too long to wake up from sleep mode gets hotter has been idle for quite a while, leading to quite a few missed shots.
With that said, the Nikon 1 J1 can be a small and compact, high-performance system camera they enjoy its big brother could use a few tweaks to the user interface to increase suit the requirements of serious amateurs. The intended audience of casual users will enjoy it because of its sheer speed, built-in flash, compact size and the fun features it gives you. Let’s now find out how the Nikon 1 J1 fared inside image quality department.