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The Nikon 1 J1 is often a stylish compact system camera with 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 along with a unique Motion Snapshot Mode, the portable Nikon J1 offers more conventional shooting modes like Programmed Auto, Aperture and Shutter Priority, together with Metered Manual. Also fully briefed is often a built-in pop-up flash with a guide volume of 5, a 3 inch rear display along with an electronic shutter. Coming in at $649.95 / 549.99 using a 10-30mm standard zoom lens, $699.95 / 599.99 having a 10mm pancake lens, or $799.95 / 699.99 within 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 certainly caused by made out of aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts and is also therefore heavier than what you know already determined by its size alone, coming in at 234g with the body only. Furthermore, it feels better made compared to the official product shots maybe have you believe. Having an essentially grip-less design, the Nikon J1 is quite much a two-handed affair that will need you to retain the camera’s weight inside left-hand, clutching the lens, and employ your right hand for balance and operating the controls. This is certainly the best thing mainly because it pushes you to focus on holding you properly, which often goes a considerable ways 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. As an alternative to as being a scaled-down version of the good old F mount, it’s really a fresh design that gives 100% electronic communication relating to the attached lens as well as the camera body, thanks to a dozen contacts. Exactly like around the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, we have a white dot for easy lens alignment, although it has moved on the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) up on the mount. The lenses themselves have a short silver ridge around the lens barrel, which ought to be in alignment with said dot to ensure that you be able to attach the lens to your camera. While this might require a certain amount of becoming accustomed to, it actually makes changing lenses quicker and easier.

Without lens attached, you can view the sensor sitting right behind the plane of the bayonet mount. Such as the mount itself, the sensor is completely new. Measuring 13.2×8.8mm this “CX” format imaging chip has quantity surface area of the most popular imagers used in compact and bridge cameras such as the Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, but only about 50 % of the region of your standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip has a 1.36x longer diagonal compared to the Nikon CX imager. Considering the fact that Four Thirds features a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” breaks down to to about 2.72, meaning that a 10mm lens has approximately a similar angle of view being a 27.2mm lens by using 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 with regard to its angle-of-view range.

The rest of the Nikon J1’s faceplate is actually empty, featuring just the lens release, a receiver for the optional ML-L3 infrared handy remote control, two narrow slits to the microphone either sides from the lens, plus an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There’s no grip in any way within the front from the Nikon 1 J1.

There are two methods for powering on the Nikon 1 J1. You may either utilize the on/off button sitting near the shutter release or, for those who have a collapsible-barrel contact lens attached, you can easily press the unlocking button on the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an act that causes the camera to interchange on automatically. It is really an ingenious solution as you need to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes approximately another - not even attempt to write home about but nonetheless decent and entirely adequate.

You’ll be able to frame your shots while using the rear screen - there is absolutely no electronic viewfinder as around the V1 model, a key difference between the 2. The LCD screen is usually 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 the J1 alongside the V1, either in bright sunlit conditions or aided by the 30-110mm telezoom lens as holding you around eye-level helped to stabilise the lens and steer clear of trembling camera.

The control layout is very peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 carries a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks many of the shooting modes which might be usually seen on similar dials - that include P, A, S and M - even though it has enough room to allow for them. These modes can be obtained around the J1 however you ought to dive in the rather long-winded but not entirely logical menu to get them. The J1’s mode dial has only four settings, Photo, Video, Motion Snapshot and Smart Photo Selector. The four-way controller even offers 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 reality that there isn’t a ISO button will doubtlessly create a lot of photographers serious about getting the Nikon J1 being unhappy.

There exists a button about the rear labelled “F” but alas, it’s not a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it means that you can quickly choose from the continuous shooting modes, whilst in Video mode it permits you to toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. The two main more significant controls within the back in the camera, including a scroll wheel round the four-way pad and also a rocker switch marked which has a loupe icon. The scroll wheel is used to create the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (once you have found them within the menu, that is), whilst the rocker switch controls the aperture. The key reason why it offers a loupe icon next to it’s that this control is employed to focus upon an image to check for critical focus in Playback mode. Lastly, you will find four small buttons about the navigation pad, flush resistant to the rear panel with the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.

What exactly are the type shooting modes for the mode dial information about? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked using a green camera icon, is to try and will need to be most likely. With all the mode dial set to this particular position, you’ll be able to pick your desired exposure mode through the menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a great auto mode in which the camera analyses the scene in front of its lens and picks exactly what it thinks would be the right mode for that one scene. It’s also possible to select one with the conventional PASM modes, which present you with full menu access plus the ability to manually set the aperture, shutter speed, or both (Program AE Shift can be found in P mode). ISO and white balance will also be manually selected, only in the menu, as stated previously.

Naturally there’s AWB and auto ISO also, using the latter coming in three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) letting you specify how high you wish the camera to search if your light gets low. You can even pick from three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, where the camera takes control of exactly what it focusses on (it’s not an excellent mode to have as the default since the camera obviously can’t read the mind and may even target something else than your actual subject); Single Point, in which you can decide one of 135 AF points starting with hitting OK and after that moving the active AF point about the frame utilizing the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, that you pick your subject, press OK and allow the digital camera to follow that subject since it moves around, so long as doesn’t necessarily leave the frame of course.

The Nikon 1 J1 comes with an intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that mixes contrast- and phase-difference detection likewise as the Fujifilm F300EXR did. This will give the Nikon 1 J1 to focus extremely quickly in good light, even over a moving subject. The corporation claims the Nikon 1 system cameras are definitely the fastest-focusing machines on earth, this also matches our experience - so long as 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 as soon as another method. It certainly is you that decides which AF solution to use - the person has no affect this.

Most of the time, the J1 will often only use contrast detection when light levels are low. In good light, i was able to take sharp photos of fast-moving subjects. The Nikon J1 certainly won’t disappoint here. Manual focusing is additionally possible, although Nikon 1 lenses do not possess focus rings. If you need to focus manually, you first need to hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK and after that utilize the scroll wheel to modify focus. To assist you with this particular, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central the main image and displays a rudimentary focus scale along the right side on the frame - but those would be the only focusing helps you get. There is no peaking function available as on some rival models.

The J1 comes with an electronic shutter (the V1 has a mechanical shutter). It’s completely silent (the main objective confirmation beep may be disabled from the menu) and allows the use of shutter speeds you’d like 1/16,000th of an second and, with all the Electronic Hi setting selected, enables 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 that could only hold 12 raw files. Additionally, the application of this mode precludes AF tracking - you should lower the frame rate to 10fps if you’d like that -, as well as the viewfinder goes blank whilst the pictures are now being taken. The linksys e2000 application you can imagine where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really come in handy is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. Only at that rate, some 5 bracketed shots may very well be consumed less than 0.1 second, rendering small movements that could otherwise pose alignment problems - like leaves being blown inside wind - a non-issue. Alas, the Nikon J1 does not offer a real feature - in fact it won’t offer autoexposure bracketing by any means.

Moving on to it mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. Above all, the digital camera might be set to shoot Full HD footage, therefore you even are able to select 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, based on whether you would like to help progressive or interlaced video. If you can’t need Full HD, additionally, there are 720p @ 60fps, that’s really smooth whilst still being counts as hi-d. Secondly, you have full manual control over exposure in video mode. It is really an option; you won’t have to shoot in M mode however you can if that is things you need. Thirdly, you receive fast, continuous AF in video mode, and delay well, especially in good light. Movies are compressed with all the H.264 codec and stored as MOV files. You will find separate shutter release buttons for stills and video, and due to this - along with the massive processing power of the Nikon J1 - you can take multiple full-resolution stills even when recording HD video. This works the other way round too - you can capture a show clip even though the mode dial influences Still Image position, simply by pressing the red movie shutter release. We’ve discovered that in this instance the digital camera will forever record it at 720p/60fps.

And also capable of shooting regular movies in HD quality, the Nikon 1 J1 may shoot video at 400fps for slow-motion playback. The resolution is leaner as well as the aspect ratio is undoubtedly an ultra-widescreen 2.67:1, even so the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo and stuff like that. These videos are replayed at 30fps, and that is over 13x slower compared to the capture speed of 400fps, letting you get creative and prove to the world a multitude of interesting phenomena that happen straight away to see or watch in real time. The Nikon J1 goes further by giving a 1200fps video mode, however the resolution and overall quality is way too poor with the to be genuinely useful.

The next icon for the mode dial represents Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows your camera to capture a minimum of 20 photos for a single press with the shutter release, including some that were taken before fully depressing the button. You analyses the individual pictures from the series and discards 15 of which, keeping the five it thinks would be best when it comes to sharpness and composition. This feature might be genuinely useful when photographing fast action and fleeting moments.

Finally, you will find there’s so-called Motion Snapshot mode where the camera records a brief high-definition movie - whose buffering starts in a half-press with the shutter release, so again includes events which in fact had happened prior to button was fully depressed - and in addition requires a still photograph. The movie as well as the still image are residing in separate files however the camera can combine them right into a single slow-motion clip with vocals. It’s fun but we can’t really envision people applying this shooting mode frequently. (If you observe the video over a computer, it’s going to play back at normal speed, without sound, which means you mode is very only interesting in the event you comprehend the clip in-camera or hook the camera as much as 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 a smaller EN-EL20 battery to the V1 government, and it is consequently capable of producing considerably less shots on a single charge, managing around 230, even though it helps to produce the digital camera body more compact. The camera’s tripod socket consists of metal and it is in line using the lens’ optical axis. This also signifies that changing batteries or cards isn’t likely even though the J1 is placed on a tripod, since the hinges from the battery/card compartment door are extremely nearby the tripod mount.

So, how did we love to using the Nikon 1 J1? Similarly, we liked it a good deal. In good light, its auto-focus strategy is indeed faster than pretty much anything we’ve used to date, being able to track and lock focus on numerous truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding plenty of sharp images in situations where our keeper rates haven’t ever 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 it is modest guide number might suggest, while using clever design minimising red-eye.

Conversely, the Nikon J1 has its share of frustrating idiosyncrasies beginning from the consumer interface that makes you dive into your menu to gain access to functions as easy as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons to some finished product, they could at the very least increase the risk for “F” button customisable via a firmware update. Also, while there is an avid button for exposure compensation - a good thing - Some try to activate a live histogram, community . would’ve made exposure compensation considerably more useful and simple to utilize. Again, this can probably be fixed in firmware.

We missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, specifically in bright light or with the telephoto lens which doesn’t 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, rather than more proactive sensor cleaning unit the V1 offers, and also the smaller battery implies that you will need to buy an additional someone to get through a day’s heavy shooting. Deficiency of an accessory port shows that almost no Nikon 1 accessories are that will work with the J1, like the external flash and GPS unit.

One more thing we did not like was that the camera would always show the photo just taken for a couple seconds onscreen, therefore we wouldn’t find a way to turn this instant postview function completely off (even if you can at any rate cancel it with a half-press in the shutter release). Finally, whilst the camera is normally fast and responsive, your camera takes overly long to get up from sleep mode gets hotter has been idle for quite a while, producing quite a few missed shots.

All things considered, the Nikon 1 J1 is often a small, and compact, high-performance system camera that they like its your government would use several tweaks to the graphical user interface to raised suit the requirements of serious amateurs. The intended audience of casual users will require to it for the sheer speed, built-in flash, lightweight along with the fun features it offers. Allow us to now observe how the Nikon 1 J1 fared inside image quality department.