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The Nikon 1 J1 can be a stylish compact system camera having a 10-megapixel “CX” format sensor plus 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 as well as a unique Motion Snapshot Mode, the portable Nikon J1 now offers more conventional shooting modes like Programmed Auto, Aperture and Shutter Priority, together with Metered Manual. Also aboard is really 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 having a 10-30mm contact, $699.95 / 599.99 using a 10mm pancake lens, or $799.95 / 699.99 in a double-lens kit together with the 10-30mm and 30-110mm zoom lenses, the Nikon 1 J1 is scheduled to take a sale later this month.

The Nikon 1 J1 is mostly constructed from aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts and it is therefore heavier than you would think based on its size alone, weighing 234g to the body only. It also feels better made compared to the official product shots maybe have you believe. With an essentially grip-less design, the Nikon J1 is extremely much a two-handed affair that really needs someone to contain the camera’s weight from the left-hand, clutching the lens, and use your right hand for balance and operating the controls. This is actually an excellent the way it pushes you to be aware of holding you properly, which inturn goes a long way 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. As opposed to being a scaled-down version on the out of date F mount, it’s a completely new design that gives 100% electronic communication between your attached lens and the camera body, courtesy of several contacts. Exactly like for the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, there exists a white dot for easy lens alignment, eventhough it has moved through the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) up of the mount. The lenses themselves include a short silver ridge around the lens barrel, which needs to be in alignment with said dot to ensure someone to be able to attach the lens to your camera. Although this may necessitate a certain amount of getting used to, this task makes changing lenses quicker and simpler.

Without the need of lens attached, you can observe the sensor sitting right behind the plane on the bayonet mount. Like the mount itself, the sensor is brand new. Measuring 13.2×8.8mm this “CX” format imaging chip has double the amount surface area of the biggest imagers employed in compact and bridge cameras much like the Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, only most of the area of any standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip features a 1.36x longer diagonal as opposed to Nikon CX imager. Since Four Thirds features a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” works out to about 2.72, which means that a 10mm lens has approximately a similar 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 the same as a 27.2-81.6mm (or, practically speaking, 28-80mm) FX lens in terms of its angle-of-view range.

The remainder of the Nikon J1’s faceplate is almost empty, featuring the lens release, a receiver with the optional ML-L3 infrared remote device, two narrow slits with the microphone spare on both from the lens, and an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There is not any grip by any means within the front with the Nikon 1 J1.

There’s two options for powering within the Nikon 1 J1. Either utilize on/off button sitting next to the shutter release or, if you have a collapsible-barrel contact attached, just press the unlocking button within the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an action that produces the camera to interchange on automatically. It is deemed an ingenious solution since you need to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes about a 2nd - nothing to write home about however decent and entirely adequate.

You’ll be able to frame your shots using the rear screen - there is not any electronic viewfinder as on 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 but only so-so visibility in strong daylight. We missed the EVF with all the J1 alongside the V1, in bright sunlit conditions or aided by the 30-110mm telezoom lens as holding your camera up to eye-level helped to stabilise the lens and steer clear of trembling camera.

The control layout is rather peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 features a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks a lot of the shooting modes that happen to be usually situated on similar dials - that include P, A, S and M - though it has enough room to match them. These modes can be obtained on the J1 nevertheless, you need to dive into the rather long-winded but not entirely logical menu to locate 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. Although this isn’t a bad range of functions, the fact that there isn’t a ISO button will doubtlessly produce a lot of photographers enthusiastic about getting the Nikon J1 to be unhappy.

There exists a button around the rear labelled “F” but alas, this is not a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it lets you quickly pick from the continuous shooting modes, when it’s in Video mode it lets you toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There are 2 more essential controls on the back with the camera, including a scroll wheel about the four-way pad and also a rocker switch marked having a loupe icon. The scroll wheel is needed to line the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (when you’ve found them within the menu, which is), as the rocker switch controls the aperture. The key reason why it has a loupe icon close to it truly is this control is employed to focus upon an image to confirm for critical concentrate Playback mode. Lastly, you can find four small buttons across the navigation pad, flush from the rear panel in the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.

So what are the type shooting modes on the mode dial all about? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked having a green camera icon, is to try and 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 through the menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a great automatic mode when the camera analyses the scene before its lens and picks exactly what thinks is the right mode for that one scene. You can also choose one of the conventional PASM modes, which present you with full menu access and the chance to manually set the aperture, shutter speed, or both (Program AE Shift will come in P mode). ISO and white balance can be manually selected, but only on the menu, as mentioned above.

Of course there’s AWB and auto ISO at the same time, using the latter being released three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) helping you to specify how high you want you to search in the event the light gets low. You may also pick from three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, the place that the camera takes control of what it focusses on (this isn’t a terrific mode to have when your default as being the camera obviously can’t read your brain and may even give attention to another thing than your actual subject); Single Point, in which you can make considered one of 135 AF points first by hitting OK and then moving the active AF point throughout the frame while using the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, where you pick your subject, press OK and let the camera to monitor that subject as it moves around, provided that doesn’t necessarily leave the frame needless to say.

The Nikon 1 J1 posseses an intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that mixes contrast- and phase-difference detection in a similar fashion since the Fujifilm F300EXR did. This will give the Nikon 1 J1 to concentrate extremely quickly in good light, even with a moving subject. The business claims the Nikon 1 system cameras include the fastest-focusing machines on the planet, this also matches our experience - as long as there’s enough light. When light levels drop, you switches to contrast-detect AF which, though faster compared to most cameras, isn’t as fast as the other method. It’s always your camera that decides which AF method to use - the person has no affect this.

Generally speaking, the J1 in most cases only head for contrast detection when light levels are low. In good light, we had arrived capable of taking sharp photos of fast-moving subjects. The Nikon J1 certainly doesn’t disappoint here. Manual focusing can be possible, even though the Nikon 1 lenses will not have focus rings. If you wish to focus manually, you first need to hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK and after that utilize scroll wheel to focus. To help you using this type of, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central portion of the image and displays a rudimentary focus scale along the right side with 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 posseses an electronic shutter (the V1 even offers an analog shutter). It’s totally silent (the focus confirmation beep is usually disabled from the menu) and allows using shutter speeds you’d like 1/16,000th of the second and, while using Electronic Hi setting selected, helps you to shoot full-resolution stills at 60 frames per second. Note however that although this is the major achievement, it’s tied to a buffer which could only hold 12 raw files. Additionally, the utilization of this mode precludes AF tracking - you will need to lower the frame rate to 10fps if you would like that -, along with the viewfinder goes blank even though the pictures are taken. The linksys e2000 application we could think about where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really be useful is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. Only at that rate, some 5 bracketed shots may be drawn in lower than 0.1 second, rendering small movements that can otherwise pose alignment problems - like leaves being blown inside the wind - a non-issue. Alas, the Nikon J1 won’t offer this type of feature - in fact no offer autoexposure bracketing by any means.

Selling it to it mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. Above all, your camera can be set to shoot Full HD footage, and also you even reach choose between 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, depending on whether you’d rather help progressive or interlaced video. Unless you need Full HD, in addition there are 720p @ 60fps, which can be really smooth yet still counts as hi-d. Secondly, you get full manual treating exposure in video mode. It becomes an option; you won’t have to shoot in M mode however, you can if that’s what you require. Thirdly, you have fast, continuous AF in video mode, and delay pills work well, especially in good light. Movies are compressed utilizing the H.264 codec and stored as MOV files. You’ll find separate shutter release buttons for stills and video, and due to this - along with the massive processing power from the Nikon J1 - it is possible to take multiple full-resolution stills at the same time recording HD video. This works the opposite too - you can capture a motion picture clip regardless if the mode dial is in the Still Image position, simply by pressing the red movie shutter release. We’ve found that in this case the camera will forever record the video at 720p/60fps.

As well as being 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 gloomier plus the aspect ratio is surely an ultra-widescreen 2.67:1, however the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo and so forth. These videos are played back at 30fps, and that is over 13x slower compared to capture speed of 400fps, letting you get creative and show the world numerous interesting phenomena that happen too rapidly to observe instantly. The Nikon J1 goes a little more forward through providing a 1200fps video mode, even so the resolution and overall quality is just too poor for your for being genuinely useful.

Your third icon around the mode dial is short for Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows your camera to capture at the least 20 photos at the single press of the shutter release, including some which were taken before fully depressing the button. The digital camera analyses the consumer pictures from the series and discards 15 of those, keeping merely the five which it thinks are best 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 the location where the camera records a short high-definition movie - whose buffering starts in a half-press of the shutter release, so again includes events that have happened prior to button was fully depressed - and in addition uses a still photograph. The film and the still image are trapped 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 frequently. (In case you view the video over a computer, it is going to play back at normal speed, without sound, so this mode is very only interesting when you look at the clip in-camera or hook the camera nearly an HDTV with an HDMI cable.)

The Nikon J1 stores pics and vids on SD/SDHC/SDXC memory cards, and supports the fastest UHS-I speed class. You runs using a lesser EN-EL20 battery to the V1 your government, which is consequently able to produce considerably less shots on one charge, managing around 230, eventhough it helps for making the digital camera body small. The camera’s tripod socket is constructed of metal and is also situated in line with the lens’ optical axis. This actually also signifies that changing batteries or cards isn’t feasible whilst the J1 is mounted on a tripod, since the hinges of the battery/card compartment door are too near to the tripod mount.

So, how did we like with all the Nikon 1 J1? On one hand, we liked it a great deal. In good light, its auto-focus technique is indeed faster than virtually anything we’ve used thus far, the ability to track and lock concentrate on a selection of truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding many sharp images in situations where our keeper rates have never 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, using the clever design minimising red-eye.

Alternatively, the Nikon J1 does have it’s share of frustrating idiosyncrasies starting with the person interface that makes you dive in to the menu gain access to functions as easy as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons to your finished product, they are able to at the very least result in the “F” button customisable by using a firmware update. Also, nevertheless there is a separate button for exposure compensation - that is a a valuable thing - I didnrrrt are able to activate an active histogram, eventhough it would’ve made exposure compensation far more useful as well as simple to make use of. Again, this could apt to be fixed in firmware.

We also missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, particularly bright light or with all the telephoto lens which does not lend itself well to being held out at arms length. The J1 has only a glass dust shield as it is defense against unwanted debris, instead of the more proactive sensor cleaning unit the V1 offers, and the smaller battery shows that you will have to buy an extra one to go through the day’s heavy shooting. The lack of an accessory port shows that almost no Nikon 1 accessories are appropriate for the J1, such as the external flash and GPS unit.

One more thing we didn’t like was that the camera would always show the photo just taken for a few seconds onscreen, and now we wouldn’t are able to turn this instant postview function completely off (even if you can at any rate cancel it via a half-press with the shutter release). Finally, as the camera is often fast and responsive, you takes way too long to get up from sleep mode if it has become idle for a while, contributing to a number of missed shots.

That being said, the Nikon 1 J1 is a smaller than average compact, high-performance system camera they like its government would use several tweaks to the program to raised suit the needs of serious amateurs. The intended target market of casual users will cherish it for its sheer speed, built-in flash, compact size and the fun features there is. We will now observe the Nikon 1 J1 fared inside the image quality department.