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The Nikon 1 J1 is really a stylish compact system camera with 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 plus 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 agreeable is really a built-in pop-up flash that has a guide number of 5, a 3 inch rear display plus an electronic shutter. Pricing $649.95 / 549.99 having a 10-30mm standard zoom lens, $699.95 / 599.99 having a 10mm pancake lens, or $799.95 / 699.99 in a double-lens kit 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 mainly constructed from aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts which is therefore heavier than what you know already determined by its size alone, weighing in at 234g to the body only. What’s more, it feels better made than the official product shots would have you believe. By having an essentially grip-less design, the Nikon J1 can be quite much a two-handed affair that requires that you contain the camera’s weight within the left hand, clutching the lens, and make use of your right hand for balance and operating the controls. A great the good thing mainly because it makes you take note of holding the camera properly, which inturn goes far towards avoiding shake-induced blur in your photos.

The camera’s clean, minimalist front plate is covered with the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Rather then like a scaled-down version of the out of date F mount, it’s really a fresh design that provides 100% electronic communication involving the attached lens and the camera body, for twelve contacts. Exactly like around the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, you will find there’s white dot for easy lens alignment, though it has moved through the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) to the top level of the mount. The lenses themselves use a short silver ridge about the lens barrel, which should be in alignment with said dot to ensure one to manage to attach the lens towards the camera. While this might need a little bit of becoming familiar with, it actually makes changing lenses quicker and easier.

Without lens attached, you will see the sensor sitting directly behind the plane on the bayonet mount. Such as mount itself, the sensor is brand new. Measuring 13.2×8.8mm this “CX” format imaging chip has double the area of the largest imagers used in compact and bridge cameras just like the Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, but only about 50 % of the vicinity of your standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip has a 1.36x longer diagonal than the Nikon CX imager. Provided that Four Thirds features a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” works out to around 2.72, which means that a 10mm lens has approximately precisely the same angle of view like a 27.2mm lens while 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 merely the lens release, a receiver for the optional ML-L3 infrared remote device, two narrow slits for your microphone either sides on the lens, and an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There’s no grip by any means around the front in the Nikon 1 J1.

There are two options for powering around the Nikon 1 V1. You can make use of the on/off button sitting near the shutter release or, when you have a collapsible-barrel zoom lens attached, you can just press the unlocking button within the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an act that triggers you to modify on automatically. It becomes an ingenious solution as you need to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes just over a second - not even attempt to write home about however decent and entirely adequate.

It is possible to frame your shots with all the rear screen - there is not any electronic viewfinder as around the V1 model, an important difference between both. The LCD screen is often 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 while using the J1 alongside the V1, in bright sunlit conditions or aided by the 30-110mm telezoom lens as holding the digital camera as much as eye-level helped to stabilise the lens and prevent camera shake.

The control layout is very peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 has a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks almost all of the shooting modes which might be usually found on similar dials - especially P, A, S and M - even though it has enough room to allow for them. These modes are available for the J1 however you have to dive in the rather long-winded and not entirely logical menu to locate them. The J1’s mode dial just 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 range of functions, the belief that there is absolutely no ISO button will doubtlessly create a wide range of photographers interested in purchasing the Nikon J1 to get unhappy.

There is a button for the rear labelled “F” but alas, this is not a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it lets you quickly choose from the continuous shooting modes, whilst in Video mode it allows you to toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There are two more significant controls around the back in the camera, together with a scroll wheel about the four-way pad as well as a rocker switch marked having a loupe icon. The scroll wheel is needed to create the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (when you’ve found them inside menu, that may be), as the rocker switch controls the aperture. Precisely why it offers a loupe icon near to it can be that it control is employed to zoom in upon an image to check for critical concentrate Playback mode. Finally, you will discover four small buttons about the navigation pad, flush contrary to the rear panel with the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.

Just what exactly are the types shooting modes on the mode dial information on? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked having a green camera icon, is the place you will want to be most of the time. While using mode dial set to this position, it is possible to pick your desired exposure mode in the menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a brilliant auto mode the place that the camera analyses the scene looking at its lens and picks what it thinks is the right way of any particular one scene. It’s also possible to make a choice from the conventional PASM modes, which present you with full menu access as well as the ability to manually set the aperture, shutter speed, or both (Program AE Shift will come in P mode). ISO and white balance may also be manually selected, only from the menu, as stated earlier.

Of course there’s AWB and auto ISO also, with the latter being released in three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) enabling you to specify how high you want the digital camera to go if the light gets low. You can even select three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, in which the camera takes control of just what it focusses on (this is simply not a fantastic mode to possess as your default since the camera obviously can’t read your mind and may even consentrate on something else entirely than your actual subject); Single Point, the place you can select one of 135 AF points starting with hitting OK then moving the active AF point around the frame utilizing the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, the place you pick your subject, press OK and allow the digital camera to trace that subject as it moves around, so long as this doesn’t happen leave the frame certainly.

The Nikon 1 J1 has a intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that mixes contrast- and phase-difference detection likewise as being the Fujifilm F300EXR did. This gives the Nikon 1 J1 to focus extremely quickly in good light, even using a moving subject. This company claims the Nikon 1 system cameras are definitely the fastest-focusing machines in the world, and this matches our experience - providing there’s enough light. When light levels drop, the digital camera switches to contrast-detect AF which, though faster compared to most cameras, isn’t nearly as soon as the other method. It is you that decides which AF method to use - the user doesn’t have impact on this.

Generally speaking, the J1 will often only head for contrast detection when light levels are low. In good light, we had arrived able to take sharp photos of fast-moving subjects. The Nikon J1 certainly does not disappoint here. Manual focusing is additionally possible, even though the Nikon 1 lenses would not have focus rings. If you want to focus manually, you firstly ought to hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK and after that make use of the scroll wheel to alter focus. To be of assistance with this, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central section of the image and displays a rudimentary focus scale down the right side of the frame - but those are the only focusing helps you get. There is no peaking function available as on some rival models.

The J1 posseses an electronic shutter (the V1 boasts an analog shutter). It is absolutely silent (the main objective confirmation beep is usually disabled from the menu) and allows the usage of shutter speeds as soon as 1/16,000th of a second and, using the Electronic Hi setting selected, lets you shoot full-resolution stills at 60 fps. Note however that although it is a major achievement, it’s limited by a buffer that can only hold 12 raw files. Additionally, using this mode precludes AF tracking - you need to lower the frame rate to 10fps if you would like that -, and the viewfinder goes blank as the pictures are now being taken. About the only application you can think of where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really prove useful is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. Only at that rate, some 5 bracketed shots may very well be taken in a lot less than 0.1 second, rendering small movements that will otherwise pose alignment problems - like leaves being blown from the wind - a non-issue. Alas, the Nikon J1 will not offer a real feature - in truth this doesn’t offer autoexposure bracketing by any means.

Trying the recording mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. First of all, your camera could be set to shoot Full HD footage, therefore you even are able to select from 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, based on whether you want to assist progressive or interlaced video. Unless you need Full HD, additionally, there is 720p @ 60fps, and that is really smooth whilst still being counts as high-definition. Secondly, you have full manual treatments for exposure in video mode. It becomes an option; you won’t have to shoot in M mode nevertheless, you can if that’s things you need. Thirdly, you will get fast, continuous AF in video mode, and it works well, particularly in good light. Movies are compressed utilizing the H.264 codec and stored as MOV files. You can find separate shutter release buttons for stills and video, and due to this - as well as the massive processing power in the Nikon J1 - it is possible to take multiple full-resolution stills while recording HD video. This works vice versa too - you’ll be able to capture a motion picture clip even if the mode dial is with the Still Image position, simply by pressing the red movie shutter release. We’ve learned that in such cases the camera will usually record film at 720p/60fps.

And also being efficient at shooting regular movies in HD quality, the Nikon 1 J1 may shoot video at 400fps for slow-motion playback. The resolution is gloomier and the aspect ratio is surely an ultra-widescreen 2.67:1, but the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo and so on. These videos are replayed at 30fps, which can be a lot more than 13x slower compared to capture speed of 400fps, helping you to get creative and prove to the world an array of interesting phenomena that happen too soon to see instantly. The Nikon J1 goes a step forward by offering a 1200fps video mode, however the resolution and overall quality is just too big poor for that to become genuinely useful.

Your third icon on the mode dial stands for Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows your camera to capture at least 20 photos at a single press of the shutter release, including some which were taken before fully depressing the button. You analyses the average person pictures from the series and discards 15 of which, keeping merely the five it thinks would be better when it comes 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 location where the camera records a quick high-definition movie - whose buffering starts with a half-press on the shutter release, so again includes events which in fact had happened prior to a button was fully depressed - as well as takes a still photograph. The film along with the still image are residing in separate files nevertheless the camera can combine them in a single slow-motion clip with vocals. It’s fun but we’re not able to really envision people using this shooting mode frequently. (When you comprehend the video on the computer, it will play back at normal speed, without sound, this mode is really only interesting if you look at the clip in-camera or hook your camera approximately an HDTV with an HDMI cable.)

The Nikon J1 stores pics and vids on SD/SDHC/SDXC memory cards, and sports ths fastest UHS-I speed class. The digital camera operates on a compact EN-EL20 battery to the V1 your government, and is particularly consequently able to produce much less shots on a single charge, managing around 230, eventhough it does help for making you body smaller. The camera’s tripod socket is made from metal and is situated line while using lens’ optical axis. This also ensures that changing batteries or cards isn’t feasible as you move the J1 is placed on a tripod, because the hinges of the battery/card compartment door are far too close to the tripod mount.

So, how did we like while using Nikon 1 J1? Similarly, we liked it a lot. In good light, its auto-focus product is indeed faster than virtually anything we’ve used so far, having the ability to track and lock give attention to a selection of truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding many 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 after we had used a slower camera. The built-in pop-up flash proved more useful the reason is modest guide number might suggest, together with the clever design minimising red-eye.

Alternatively, the Nikon J1 has its own share of frustrating idiosyncrasies you start with the user interface that can make you dive into your menu to get into functions as common as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons into a finished product, they are able to a minimum of make the “F” button customisable by using a firmware update. Also, to find out a dedicated button for exposure compensation - a positive thing - I didnrrrt find a way to activate an active histogram, eventhough it would’ve made exposure compensation far more useful and make use of. Again, this will likely to end up fixed in firmware.

We also missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, especially in bright light or aided by the telephoto lens which doesn’t lend itself well to being held out at arms length. The J1 just has a glass dust shield since it is defense against unwanted debris, rather than more proactive sensor cleaning unit how the V1 offers, and also the smaller battery means that you should buy an additional that you get through a day’s heavy shooting. Deficiency of an accessory port means that almost none of the Nikon 1 accessories are suitable for the J1, such as external flash and GPS unit.

Another thing we failed to like was that the camera would always show the image just taken for some seconds onscreen, therefore we would not be capable of turn this instant postview function completely off (even if you can at least cancel it by way of a half-press with the shutter release). Finally, as you move the camera is mostly fast and responsive, you takes excessively long to wake from sleep mode when it has been idle for a time, contributing to many missed shots.

All things considered, the Nikon 1 J1 is a small, and compact, high-performance system camera that like its your government might use a couple of tweaks to the user interface to increase suit the requirements of serious amateurs. The intended target audience of casual users will require to it due to the sheer speed, built-in flash, compact size and the fun features there is. Let us now discover how the Nikon 1 J1 fared within the image quality department.