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The Nikon 1 J1 is usually a stylish compact system camera featuring a 10-megapixel “CX” format sensor as well as the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Boasting continuous shooting speeds all the way to 60 frames per second at full resolution, Full HD video capture, an ultra-fast hybrid auto-focus system, Smart Photo Selector as well as 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 is a built-in pop-up flash that has a guide amount of 5, a 3 inch rear display and an electronic shutter. Charging $649.95 / 549.99 using a 10-30mm the len’s, $699.95 / 599.99 that has a 10mm pancake lens, or $799.95 / 699.99 in a very double-lens kit while using 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 which is therefore heavier than what you know already dependant on its size alone, weighing 234g for that body only. In addition, it feels better quality versus the official product shots would have you believe. With the essentially grip-less design, the Nikon J1 is incredibly much a two-handed affair that needs one to secure the camera’s weight inside the left-hand, clutching the lens, and utilize your right hand for balance and operating the controls. A great an excellent because it can make you focus on holding you properly, which often goes further 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 as a scaled-down version from the classic F mount, it’s really a completely new design providing you with 100% electronic communication between attached lens as well as the camera body, thanks to a dozen contacts. The same as about the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, there’s a white dot for convenient lens alignment, although it has moved in the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) to the top level in the mount. The lenses themselves include a short silver ridge about the lens barrel, which has to be in alignment with said dot in order for one to be capable of attach the lens towards the camera. Of course this might require a certain amount of getting used to, it genuinely makes changing lenses quicker and simpler.

Without the need of lens attached, you will notice the sensor sitting directly behind the plane from the bayonet mount. Much like the mount itself, the sensor is brand new. Measuring 13.2×8.8mm this “CX” format imaging chip has quantity floor of the largest imagers utilized in compact and bridge cameras just like the Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, only most of the area of any standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip incorporates a 1.36x longer diagonal compared to Nikon CX imager. Considering the fact that Four Thirds has a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” ends up to about 2.72, which means that a 10mm lens has approximately the same angle of view as a 27.2mm lens on an FX or 35mm film camera. The Nikon 1 Nikkor 10-30mm standard zoom is thus comparable to a 27.2-81.6mm (or, practically speaking, 28-80mm) FX lens with regards to its angle-of-view range.

The remainder of the Nikon J1’s faceplate is actually empty, featuring exactly the lens release, a receiver with the optional ML-L3 infrared remote control, two narrow slits with the microphone both sides with the lens, along with an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There is no grip whatsoever within the front from the Nikon 1 J1.

There’s 2 ways of powering for the Nikon 1 V1. You may make use of the on/off button sitting near the shutter release or, in case you have a collapsible-barrel zoom lens attached, you can easily press the unlocking button around the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an action that triggers the camera to interchange on automatically. It becomes an ingenious solution because you require to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes approximately a 2nd - not write home about but nonetheless decent and entirely adequate.

It is possible to frame your shots using the rear screen - there is no electronic viewfinder as within the V1 model, an essential difference between both the. The LCD screen is often a three-inch, 460,000-dot display that boasts wide viewing angles, great definition and accurate colours but only so-so visibility in strong daylight. We missed the EVF when using the J1 alongside the V1, in both bright sunlit conditions or when using the 30-110mm telezoom lens as holding the camera as much as eye-level helped to stabilise the lens and steer clear of trembling camera.

The control layout is quite peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 incorporates a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks many of the shooting modes which might be usually entirely on similar dials - such as P, A, S and M - eventhough it has enough room to match them. These modes can be obtained on the J1 however you need to dive into your rather long-winded but not entirely logical menu to get them. The J1’s mode dial merely has four settings, Photo, Video, Motion Snapshot and Smart Photo Selector. The four-way controller also 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 number of functions, the belief that there’s no ISO button will doubtlessly cause a large amount of photographers serious about acquiring the Nikon J1 being unhappy.

There exists a button on the rear labelled “F” but alas, this is simply not a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it lets you quickly pick from the continuous shooting modes, whilst in Video mode it enables you to toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There’s two more significant controls about the back with the camera, together with a scroll wheel about the four-way pad and a rocker switch marked with a loupe icon. The scroll wheel is used to create the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (after you have found them within the menu, which is), even though the rocker switch controls the aperture. The reason it’s a loupe icon alongside it is that control can be used to zoom in by using an image to confirm for critical concentrate Playback mode. Last of all, you will find four small buttons about the navigation pad, flush from the rear panel with the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.

Precisely what are shooting modes about the mode dial information about? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked that has a green camera icon, is to may wish to be most likely. With the mode dial set to this particular position, you can pick your desired exposure mode from your menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a brilliant auto mode the place that the camera analyses the scene in front of its lens and picks what it really thinks is the right mode for that particular scene. It’s also possible to pick one from the conventional PASM modes, which offer you full menu access along with the capacity to manually set the aperture, shutter speed, or both (Program AE Shift is available in P mode). ISO and white balance can be manually selected, only from your menu, as stated previously.

Obviously there’s AWB and auto ISO as well, while using latter to arrive three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) letting you specify how high you desire the camera to search when the light gets low. Also you can select three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, where the camera takes power over what it focusses on (this isn’t an excellent mode to own when your default as being the camera obviously can’t read your thoughts and will focus on something else than your actual subject); Single Point, that you can select considered one of 135 AF points starting with hitting OK and moving the active AF point around the frame with all the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, the place you pick your subject, press OK and enable the camera to trace that subject the way it moves around, so long as it does not leave the frame needless to say.

The Nikon 1 J1 has a intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that combines contrast- and phase-difference detection likewise because the Fujifilm F300EXR did. This allows the Nikon 1 J1 to target extremely quickly in good light, even over a moving subject. This company claims the Nikon 1 system cameras include the fastest-focusing machines on this planet, and this also matches our experience - providing 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 you wish the other method. It certainly is the camera that decides which AF solution to use - anyone does not have any affect on this.

Most of the time, the J1 usually only head for contrast detection when light levels are low. In good light, we had been able to take sharp photos of fast-moving subjects. The Nikon J1 certainly does not disappoint here. Manual focusing can be possible, although the Nikon 1 lenses do not have focus rings. In order to focus manually, first you have to hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK and after that utilize the scroll wheel to modify focus. To help you out using this, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central area of the image and displays a rudimentary focus scale on the right side from the frame - but those include the only focusing helps you get. There is not any peaking function available as on some rival models.

The J1 has a electronic shutter (the V1 boasts a mechanical shutter). Itrrrs very silent (the main objective confirmation beep may be disabled from the menu) and allows the utilization of shutter speeds you’d like 1/16,000th of your second and, with the Electronic Hi setting selected, enables you to shoot full-resolution stills at 60 frames per second. Note however that although this is a major achievement, it’s restricted by a buffer that could 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 -, plus the viewfinder goes blank whilst the pictures will be taken. The linksys e2000 application we are able to consider where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really come in useful is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. As of this rate, several 5 bracketed shots may be drawn in a lot less than 0.1 second, rendering small movements which could otherwise pose alignment problems - like leaves being blown within the wind - a non-issue. Alas, the Nikon J1 won’t offer such a feature - actually it won’t offer autoexposure bracketing by any means.

Selling it to the video mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. First of all, the digital camera can be set to shoot Full HD footage, so you even are able to choose from 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, based on whether you would like to use progressive or interlaced video. If you don’t need Full HD, additionally, there is 720p @ 60fps, that is really smooth whilst still being counts as high-definition. Secondly, you have full manual control of exposure in video mode. It is really an option; you don’t have to shoot in M mode and you can if that is what you need. Thirdly, you receive fast, continuous AF in video mode, and delay well, specifically in good light. Movies are compressed with all the H.264 codec and stored as MOV files. There are separate shutter release buttons for stills and video, and due to this - and also the massive processing power from the Nikon J1 - you can take multiple full-resolution stills even when recording HD video. This works the opposite too - it is possible to capture your favorite shows clip even when the mode dial is with the Still Image position, simply by pressing the red movie shutter release. We’ve learned that in cases like this your camera will forever record the recording at 720p/60fps.

And also being competent at shooting regular movies in HD quality, the Nikon 1 J1 could also shoot video at 400fps for slow-motion playback. The resolution is less and also the aspect ratio can be an ultra-widescreen 2.67:1, though the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo and stuff like that. These videos are replayed at 30fps, that is over 13x slower compared to the capture speed of 400fps, helping you to get creative and show the world several interesting phenomena that happen too rapidly to watch in real time. The Nikon J1 goes a little more forward by offering a 1200fps video mode, nevertheless the resolution and overall quality is simply too poor for that to get genuinely useful.

The next icon around the mode dial stands for Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows the camera to capture at the very least 20 photos with a single press in the shutter release, including some that have been taken before fully depressing the button. Your camera analyses the person pictures inside series and discards 15 of which, keeping only the five that it thinks are best with regard to sharpness and composition. This feature could be genuinely useful when photographing fast action and fleeting moments.

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

The Nikon J1 stores pics and vids on SD/SDHC/SDXC memory cards, and props up fastest UHS-I speed class. The camera operates on a lesser EN-EL20 battery to its V1 larger, and it is consequently capable of producing even less shots on a single charge, managing around 230, even though it does help to make the digital camera body smaller sized. The camera’s tripod socket is manufactured out of metal and is found in line while using lens’ optical axis. This actually also implies that changing batteries or cards isn’t feasible whilst the J1 is mounted on a tripod, as the hinges in the battery/card compartment door are far too close to the tripod mount.

So, how did we love to while using Nikon 1 J1? On one hand, we liked it a good deal. In good light, its auto-focus strategy is indeed faster than virtually anything we’ve used thus far, having the capacity to track and lock give attention to an array of truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding plenty of sharp images in situations where our keeper rates have not been quite 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, while using clever design minimising red-eye.

However, the Nikon J1 has its own share of frustrating idiosyncrasies you start with the consumer interface that forces you to dive in the menu to access functions as common as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons to a finished product, they can at least result in the “F” button customisable with a firmware update. Also, nevertheless there is a separate button for exposure compensation - the industry positive thing - Some find a way to activate a live histogram, although it would have made exposure compensation additional useful and straightforward to make use of. Again, this may more likely fixed in firmware.

We missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, especially in bright light or while using 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, instead of the more proactive sensor cleaning unit that this V1 offers, plus the smaller battery signifies that you will need to buy an additional that you arrive at the day’s heavy shooting. Lacking an accessory port signifies that almost no Nikon 1 accessories are suitable for the J1, for example the external flash and GPS unit.

Yet another thing we would not like was that the camera would always show the image just taken a couple of seconds onscreen, and we would not are able to turn this instant postview function completely off (even though you can at least cancel it with a half-press in the shutter release). Finally, as you move the camera is usually fast and responsive, the digital camera takes excessively long to awaken from sleep mode when it may be idle for a while, resulting in many missed shots.

All things considered, the Nikon 1 J1 is a small , compact, high-performance system camera they enjoy its government might use several tweaks to its interface to better suit the needs of serious amateurs. The intended marketplace of casual users will like it due to its sheer speed, built-in flash, compact size and the fun features it provides. Allow us to now discover how the Nikon 1 J1 fared inside image quality department.