Writeup on Nikon 1 J1: Brand new Nikon Mirroless Dslrs
The Nikon 1 J1 can be a stylish compact system camera having 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 along with a unique Motion Snapshot Mode, the portable Nikon J1 also offers more conventional shooting modes like Programmed Auto, Aperture and Shutter Priority, together with Metered Manual. Also on board is a built-in pop-up flash which has a guide variety of 5, a 3 inch rear display with an electronic shutter. Coming in at $649.95 / 549.99 which has a 10-30mm contact lens, $699.95 / 599.99 using 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 go on sale later this month.
The Nikon 1 J1 is mostly made out of aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts which is therefore heavier than you would think according to its size alone, weighing 234g for that body only. It also feels higher quality compared to 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 needs you to definitely support the camera’s weight inside left hand, clutching the lens, and make use of your right hand for balance and operating the controls. This is a very important thing the way it can make you pay attention to holding you properly, which often goes a long way towards avoiding shake-induced blur within your photos.
The camera’s clean, minimalist front plate is dominated by the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Rather then like a scaled-down version from the classic F mount, it’s really a new design that provides 100% electronic communication between attached lens as well as the camera body, due to twelve contacts. Similar to about the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, we have a white dot for quick lens alignment, while it has moved in the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) to the peak of the mount. The lenses themselves have a short silver ridge for the lens barrel, which has to be in alignment with said dot to enable someone to manage to attach the lens for the camera. While this may necessitate a bit of becoming accustomed to, it genuinely makes changing lenses quicker and easier.
Without the need of lens attached, you will see the sensor sitting right behind the plane with the bayonet mount. Much 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 largest imagers used in compact and bridge cameras such as Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, but only about 50 % of the area of an standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip incorporates a 1.36x longer diagonal compared to the Nikon CX imager. Since Four Thirds features a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” computes to about 2.72, and therefore a 10mm lens has approximately the same angle of view like 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 in terms of its angle-of-view range.
The other Nikon J1’s faceplate is practically empty, featuring just the lens release, a receiver to the optional ML-L3 infrared handheld control, two narrow slits for your microphone spare on both from the lens, along with an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There isn’t any grip whatsoever on the front from the Nikon 1 J1.
The two main ways of powering on the Nikon 1 V1. You may either utilize the on/off button sitting next to the shutter release or, when you have a collapsible-barrel zoom lens attached, you can just press the unlocking button for the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an act that causes the digital camera to change on automatically. This is an ingenious solution as you need to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes about a second - absolutely nothing to write home about but still decent and entirely adequate.
You can frame your shots with all the rear screen - there’s no electronic viewfinder as about the V1 model, a key difference between the 2. The LCD screen is usually 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 with all the J1 alongside the V1, either in bright sunlit conditions or aided by the 30-110mm telezoom lens as holding your camera as much as eye-level helped to stabilise the lens and avoid trembling camera.
The control layout is rather peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 has a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks almost all of the shooting modes which are usually seen on similar dials - particularly P, A, S and M - though it has enough room to match them. These modes can be found on the J1 nevertheless, you should dive in to the rather long-winded and not entirely logical menu to seek out them. The J1’s mode dial just 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. Even though this is not a bad range of functions, the belief that there is no ISO button will doubtlessly produce a large amount of photographers thinking about acquiring the Nikon J1 to be unhappy.
We have a button on the rear labelled “F” but alas, it is not a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it means that you can quickly choose from the continuous shooting modes, when it is in Video mode it permits you to toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There’s two more vital controls around the back from the camera, including a scroll wheel round the four-way pad along with a rocker switch marked having a loupe icon. The scroll wheel is employed to set the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (once you have found them in the menu, that is certainly), whilst the rocker switch controls the aperture. Precisely why it provides a loupe icon close to it’s until this control is needed to focus while on an image to check for critical focus in Playback mode. Lastly, you will discover four small buttons around the navigation pad, flush from the rear panel with the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.
Precisely what are the ones shooting modes about the mode dial all about? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked with a green camera icon, is to should be most of the time. With the mode dial set for this position, you are able to pick your required exposure mode in the menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a smart automatic mode when the camera analyses the scene facing its lens and picks exactly what it thinks may be the right way of that specific scene. You can also select one from the conventional PASM modes, which supply you with full menu access and the power to manually set the aperture, shutter speed, or both (Program AE Shift can be purchased in P mode). ISO and white balance can even be manually selected, but only through the menu, as mentioned previously.
Of course there’s AWB and auto ISO too, with all the latter coming in three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) allowing you to specify how high you want the camera to search once the light gets low. Also you can choose between three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, when the camera takes management of what it focusses on (it’s not an incredible mode to have as your default since the camera obviously can’t read the mind and may give attention to something else than your actual subject); Single Point, where you can make one among 135 AF points frist by hitting OK after which moving the active AF point around the frame with all the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, in places you pick your subject, press OK and let your camera in order to that subject mainly because it moves around, providing this doesn’t happen leave the frame of course.
The Nikon 1 J1 comes with an intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that combines contrast- and phase-difference detection likewise because Fujifilm F300EXR did. This permits the Nikon 1 J1 to focus extremely quickly in good light, even on the moving subject. The corporation claims the Nikon 1 system cameras will be the fastest-focusing machines in the world, which matches our experience - given that there’s enough light. When light levels drop, you switches to contrast-detect AF which, though faster than on most cameras, isn’t nearly you wish the other method. It’s always your camera that decides which AF method to use - the consumer doesn’t have a influence on this.
Normally, the J1 usually only make use of contrast detection when light levels are low. In good light, there we were able to take sharp photos of fast-moving subjects. The Nikon J1 certainly won’t disappoint here. Manual focusing can also be possible, however the Nikon 1 lenses don’t have focus rings. In order to focus manually, you first should hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK and after that utilize scroll wheel to alter focus. To assist you using this type of, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central the main 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 no peaking function available as on some rival models.
The J1 has an electronic shutter (the V1 also offers a mechanical shutter). It’s absolutely silent (the main objective confirmation beep could be disabled on the menu) and allows the usage of shutter speeds as fast as 1/16,000th of a second and, while using Electronic Hi setting selected, enables you to shoot full-resolution stills at 60 frames per second. Note however that although this can be a major achievement, it’s tied to a buffer that may 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 want that -, as well as the viewfinder goes blank as you move the pictures are taken. One application we are able to imagine where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really come in useful is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. With this rate, a series of 5 bracketed shots may be taken in below 0.1 second, rendering small movements that could otherwise pose alignment problems - like leaves being blown from the wind - a non-issue. Alas, the Nikon J1 won’t offer this type of feature - the truth is it doesn’t offer autoexposure bracketing in any respect.
Trying the playback quality mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. First and foremost, the camera can be set to shoot Full HD footage, and you even arrive at choose between 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, dependant upon whether you would like to assist progressive or interlaced video. Should you not need Full HD, there is also 720p @ 60fps, which is really smooth and still counts as hi-d. Secondly, you obtain full manual treatments for exposure in video mode. It is an option; you won’t need to shoot in M mode and you can if that is what you need. Thirdly, you obtain fast, continuous AF in video mode, and it works well, particularly good light. Movies are compressed using the H.264 codec and stored as MOV files. You will discover separate shutter release buttons for stills and video, and thanks to this - in addition to the massive processing power on the Nikon J1 - you may take multiple full-resolution stills even when recording HD video. This works the opposite too - you may capture a motion picture clip even though the mode dial is with the Still Image position, by simply pressing the red movie shutter release. We’ve found that in cases like this the camera will record the playback quality at 720p/60fps.
In addition to being able to shooting regular movies in HD quality, the Nikon 1 J1 could also shoot video at 400fps for slow-motion playback. The resolution is lower and the aspect ratio is surely an ultra-widescreen 2.67:1, nevertheless the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo and so forth. These videos are played back at 30fps, that is a lot more than 13x slower compared to the capture speed of 400fps, permitting you to get creative and display to the world numerous interesting phenomena which happen too rapidly 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 third icon for the mode dial stands for Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows you to capture at the least 20 photos in a single press in the shutter release, including some that had been taken before fully depressing the button. You analyses the average person pictures inside series and discards 15 of which, keeping exactly the five which it thinks would be better with regards to sharpness and composition. This feature is usually genuinely useful when photographing fast action and fleeting moments.
Finally, there exists a so-called Motion Snapshot mode the place that the camera records a concise high-definition movie - whose buffering starts at the half-press in the shutter release, so again includes events which had happened before the button was fully depressed - plus requires a still photograph. The movie and also the still image are saved in separate files however the camera can combine them in a single slow-motion clip with background music. It’s fun but we simply cannot really envision people making use of this shooting mode regularly. (Should you view the video on the computer, it can play back at normal speed, without sound, this mode is absolutely only interesting if you see the clip in-camera or hook the digital camera around an HDTV through 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 operates on a compact EN-EL20 battery to the V1 big brother, which is consequently capable of producing even less shots on one charge, managing around 230, while it does help to make the digital camera body small. The camera’s tripod socket is constructed of metal which is situated line with all the lens’ optical axis. This too means that changing batteries or cards isn’t likely as you move the J1 is installed on a tripod, as being the hinges in the battery/card compartment door are way too nearby the tripod mount.
So, how did we love to while using Nikon 1 J1? On one side, we liked it a whole lot. In good light, its auto-focus technique is indeed faster than essentially anything we’ve used to date, being able to track and lock consentrate on an array of truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding a great deal of sharp images in situations where our keeper rates have never been extremely 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 what has modest guide number might suggest, with the clever design minimising red-eye.
In contrast, the Nikon J1 have their share of frustrating idiosyncrasies applying anyone interface that makes you dive in the menu to access functions as easy as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons to a finished product, they can at the least have the “F” button customisable via a firmware update. Also, nevertheless there is a devoted button for exposure compensation - the a valuable thing - I didnrrrt find a way to activate an active histogram, although it could have made exposure compensation a lot more useful and simple to make use of. Again, this may likely to end up fixed in firmware.
We also missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, particularly in bright light or when using the telephoto lens which does not lend itself well to being held out at arms length. The J1 just has a glass dust shield as it is defense against unwanted debris, as opposed to the more proactive sensor cleaning unit that this V1 offers, and the smaller battery ensures that you will have to buy an additional someone to get to the day’s heavy shooting. Lacking an accessory port implies that almost none of the Nikon 1 accessories are compatible with the J1, such as the external flash and GPS unit.
Something else we wouldn’t like could be that the camera would always show the image just taken for a few seconds onscreen, and that we would not be capable of turn this instant postview function completely off (although you can at least cancel it with a half-press with the shutter release). Finally, even though the camera is generally fast and responsive, the camera takes much too long to arise from sleep mode when it has been idle for some time, contributing to quite a few missed shots.
That being said, the Nikon 1 J1 is really a smaller than average compact, high-performance system camera that like its our government are able to use a number of tweaks to its user interface to improve suit the needs of serious amateurs. The intended marketplace of casual users will like it because of its sheer speed, built-in flash, lightweight and the fun features it includes. We will now find out how the Nikon 1 J1 fared from the image quality department.
Tags: j1, mirroless cameras, nikon, nikon 1, nikon 1 j1, nikon 1 v1, nikon cameras, nikon1, v1