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The Nikon 1 J1 is really a stylish compact system camera using a 10-megapixel “CX” format sensor plus 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 plus a unique Motion Snapshot Mode, the portable Nikon J1 also provides more conventional shooting modes like Programmed Auto, Aperture and Shutter Priority, in addition to Metered Manual. Also fully briefed is usually a built-in pop-up flash with a guide volume of 5, a 3 inch rear display with an electronic shutter. Costing $649.95 / 549.99 with a 10-30mm contact, $699.95 / 599.99 that has a 10mm pancake lens, or $799.95 / 699.99 in the double-lens kit with all the 10-30mm and 30-110mm zoom lenses, the Nikon 1 J1 is scheduled to take sale later this month.

The Nikon 1 J1 is mostly made from aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts and is particularly therefore heavier than you would think determined by its size alone, coming in at 234g for the body only. What’s more, it feels higher quality as opposed to official product shots maybe have you believe. Having an essentially grip-less design, the Nikon J1 is quite much a two-handed affair that really needs one to retain the camera’s weight inside the left-hand, clutching the lens, and utilize your right hand for balance and operating the controls. This is certainly an excellent since it pushes you to pay attention to holding the camera properly, which experts claim goes further 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. As opposed to to be a scaled-down version in the traditional F mount, it’s a new design that gives 100% electronic communication between the attached lens and the camera body, courtesy of twelve contacts. Similar to for the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, there’s a white dot for simple lens alignment, while it has moved through the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) to the top with the mount. The lenses themselves feature a short silver ridge around the lens barrel, which needs to be in alignment with said dot for you to definitely have the capacity to attach the lens for the camera. Even if this may necessitate a bit of becoming accustomed to, it really makes changing lenses quicker and much easier.

With no lens attached, you will see the sensor sitting directly behind the plane in the bayonet mount. Such as mount itself, the sensor is new. Measuring 13.2×8.8mm this “CX” format imaging chip has double the floor of the biggest imagers found in compact and bridge cameras such as Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, but only most of the location of a standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip features a 1.36x longer diagonal compared to Nikon CX imager. Considering the fact that Four Thirds incorporates a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” calculates to about 2.72, meaning that a 10mm lens has approximately the same angle of view like a 27.2mm lens upon an FX or 35mm film camera. The Nikon 1 Nikkor 10-30mm standard zoom is thus similar to a 27.2-81.6mm (or, practically speaking, 28-80mm) FX lens with regard to its angle-of-view range.

The other Nikon J1’s faceplate is actually empty, featuring the lens release, a receiver for your optional ML-L3 infrared handy remote control, two narrow slits for that microphone spare on both on the lens, plus an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There is absolutely no grip in any way for the front on the Nikon 1 J1.

There are 2 strategies to powering on the Nikon 1 V1. Either make use of the on/off button sitting near the shutter release or, in case you have a collapsible-barrel contact lens attached, just press the unlocking button on the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an action that produces your camera to interchange on automatically. This is an ingenious solution as you need to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes approximately an additional - absolutely nothing to write home about but still decent and entirely adequate.

You are able to frame your shots while using the rear screen - there is no electronic viewfinder as about the V1 model, an essential distinction between both the. The LCD screen is really 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 with the 30-110mm telezoom lens as holding you as much as eye-level helped to stabilise the lens and avoid camera shake.

The control layout is quite peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 has a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks many of the shooting modes which might be usually available on similar dials - that include P, A, S and M - although it has enough room to fit them. These modes are available about the J1 however you should dive to the rather long-winded and not entirely logical menu to find them. The J1’s mode dial only 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. Although this isn’t a bad selection of functions, the truth that there isn’t any ISO button will doubtlessly spark a great deal of photographers considering buying the Nikon J1 to become unhappy.

There is a button around the rear labelled “F” but alas, it is not a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it means that you can quickly select from the continuous shooting modes, whilst in Video mode it permits you to toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There’s two more essential controls for the back on the camera, including a scroll wheel round the four-way pad as well as a rocker switch marked that has a loupe icon. The scroll wheel is employed to put the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (once you’ve found them inside menu, that is), even though the rocker switch controls the aperture. Precisely why it’s got a loupe icon beside it’s that it control is used to zoom in on an image to check on for critical focus in Playback mode. Finally, you can find four small buttons round the navigation pad, flush against the rear panel in the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.

Just what exactly are those shooting modes within the mode dial exactly about? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked having a green camera icon, is the place you should be more often than not. Using the mode dial set for this position, you can pick your desired exposure mode from your menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a brilliant automatic mode in which the camera analyses the scene before its lens and picks exactly what it thinks could be the right mode for that particular scene. It’s also possible to find out of the conventional PASM modes, which present you with full menu access as well as the capacity to manually set the aperture, shutter speed, or both (Program AE Shift can be found in P mode). ISO and white balance can even be manually selected, only from the menu, as mentioned above.

Obviously there’s AWB and auto ISO as well, using the latter coming in three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) allowing you to specify how high you desire the digital camera to look in the event the light gets low. Also you can pick from three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, the place that the camera takes control of what it really focusses on (it’s not a great mode to get since your default because the camera obviously can’t read your head and may even concentrate on something different than your actual subject); Single Point, the place you can decide one among 135 AF points first by hitting OK and moving the active AF point across the frame while using four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, where you pick your subject, press OK and let the camera to track that subject as it moves around, provided that 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 the Fujifilm F300EXR did. This will give the Nikon 1 J1 to target extremely quickly in good light, even using a moving subject. The company claims the Nikon 1 system cameras include the fastest-focusing machines on earth, and also this 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 as soon as one other method. It is usually you that decides which AF technique to use - an individual does not have any impact on this.

Generally speaking, the J1 usually only resort to 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 does not disappoint here. Manual focusing can be possible, although the Nikon 1 lenses do not possess focus rings. If you wish to focus manually, you firstly need to hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK and then utilize the scroll wheel to modify focus. To assist you with this particular, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central part of the image and displays a rudimentary focus scale along the right side in the frame - but those include the only focusing aids you get. There is absolutely no peaking function available as on some rival models.

The J1 comes with a electronic shutter (the V1 boasts a mechanical shutter). It is absolutely silent (the focus confirmation beep is usually disabled from the menu) and allows the application of shutter speeds you wish 1/16,000th of any second and, with the Electronic Hi setting selected, permits you to shoot full-resolution stills at 60 frames per second. Note however that although it is a major achievement, it’s limited by 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 as you move the pictures are increasingly being taken. The only application we are able to think about where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really be convenient is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. With this rate, several 5 bracketed shots could be consumed in under 0.1 second, rendering small movements that could otherwise pose alignment problems - like leaves being blown inside the wind - a non-issue. Alas, the Nikon J1 doesn’t offer this type of feature - the truth is this doesn’t offer autoexposure bracketing by any means.

Getting to it mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. First of all, the camera is usually set to shoot Full HD footage, therefore you even arrive at select 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, dependant upon whether you’d rather work together with progressive or interlaced video. If you can’t need Full HD, in addition there are 720p @ 60fps, that is really smooth but still counts as hi-d. Secondly, you obtain full manual control over exposure in video mode. It is an option; it’s not necessary to shoot in M mode nevertheless, you can in the event that’s what you need. Thirdly, you have fast, continuous AF in video mode, and it works well, specifically in good light. Movies are compressed while using the H.264 codec and stored as MOV files. There are separate shutter release buttons for stills and video, and because of this - in addition to the massive processing power of the Nikon J1 - you can take multiple full-resolution stills whilst recording HD video. This works the other way round too - you’ll be able to capture your favorite shows clip regardless of whether the mode dial is incorporated in the Still Image position, simply by pressing the red movie shutter release. We’ve learned that in this instance the camera will invariably record the video at 720p/60fps.

And also 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 gloomier and also the aspect ratio can be an ultra-widescreen 2.67:1, however the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo and so forth. These videos are played back at 30fps, which can be in excess of 13x slower versus the capture speed of 400fps, letting you get creative and show the world several interesting phenomena which happen too soon to look at in real time. The Nikon J1 goes a step forward by providing a 1200fps video mode, nevertheless the resolution and overall quality is too poor for that being genuinely useful.

The 3rd icon within the mode dial represents Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows your camera to capture at least 20 photos in a single press on the shutter release, including some that have been taken before fully depressing the button. The camera analyses the person pictures inside series and discards 15 of those, keeping the five it thinks would be best with regards to sharpness and composition. This feature might be genuinely useful when photographing fast action and fleeting moments.

Finally, we have a so-called Motion Snapshot mode in which the camera records a quick high-definition movie - whose buffering starts at a half-press in the shutter release, so again includes events which in fact had happened ahead of the button was fully depressed - and also has a still photograph. The film as well as the still image are trapped in separate files though 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 often. (When you comprehend the video on the computer, it is going to play back at normal speed, without sound, which means this mode is really only interesting if you observe the clip in-camera or hook the digital camera as much as an HDTV by using 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 camera runs on a reduced EN-EL20 battery to its V1 our government, and is particularly consequently able to produce considerably less shots on one charge, managing around 230, while it helps to generate the digital camera body smaller sized. The camera’s tripod socket is made of metal which is found in line while using lens’ optical axis. This too shows that changing batteries or cards is not possible as the J1 is installed on a tripod, because the hinges in the battery/card compartment door are far 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 system is indeed faster than virtually anything we’ve used up to now, having the capacity to track and lock target numerous truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding lots of sharp images in situations where our keeper rates have not been 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 the reason is modest guide number might suggest, while using clever design minimising red-eye.

However, the Nikon J1 have their share of frustrating idiosyncrasies you start with the person interface that makes you dive to the menu to gain access to functions as basic as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons to some finished product, they are able to at the least result in the “F” button customisable using a firmware update. Also, while there is a passionate button for exposure compensation - a a valuable thing - I didnrrrt try to activate a live histogram, though it would have made exposure compensation much more useful and simple to use. Again, this could apt to be fixed in firmware.

We missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, specially in bright light or when using the telephoto lens which doesn’t 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, as opposed to the more proactive sensor cleaning unit that the V1 offers, as well as the smaller battery ensures that you’ll want to buy another that you arrive at the day’s heavy shooting. The possible lack of an accessory port implies that almost no Nikon 1 accessories are that will work with the J1, including the external flash and GPS unit.

Yet another thing we would not like could be that the camera would always show the photo just taken for some seconds onscreen, and now we didn’t be capable of turn this instant postview function completely off (although you can at least cancel it by way of a half-press in the shutter release). Finally, as you move the camera is often fast and responsive, the digital camera takes much too long to awaken from sleep mode gets hotter has become idle for quite a while, causing a number of missed shots.

Of course, the Nikon 1 J1 is often a small, and compact, high-performance system camera that like its our government are able to use a couple of tweaks to the graphical user interface to better suit the needs of serious amateurs. The intended target market of casual users will require to it because of its sheer speed, built-in flash, compact size along with the fun features it gives you. Allow us to now discover how the Nikon 1 J1 fared inside image quality department.