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The Nikon 1 J1 is usually a stylish compact system camera featuring 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 and also a unique Motion Snapshot Mode, the portable Nikon J1 even 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 that has a guide volume of 5, a 3 inch rear display plus an electronic shutter. Coming in at $649.95 / 549.99 with a 10-30mm standard zoom lens, $699.95 / 599.99 that has a 10mm pancake lens, or $799.95 / 699.99 in the double-lens kit while using 10-30mm and 30-110mm zoom lenses, the Nikon 1 J1 is scheduled to be sale later this month.

The Nikon 1 J1 is certainly caused by created from aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts and is also therefore heavier than you would think according to its size alone, weighing 234g with the body only. In addition, it feels higher quality versus the official product shots would have you believe. Through an essentially grip-less design, the Nikon J1 is quite much a two-handed affair that requires you to definitely 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 really a very important thing mainly because it pushes you to focus on holding you properly, which experts claim goes far towards avoiding shake-induced blur in your photos.

The camera’s clean, minimalist front plate is dominated by the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Rather then being a scaled-down version with the ancient F mount, it is a brand spanking new design that can offer 100% electronic communication relating to the attached lens plus the camera body, for a dozen contacts. Just like around the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, you will find there’s white dot for quick lens alignment, while it has moved from the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) to # 1 on the mount. The lenses themselves use a short silver ridge about the lens barrel, which needs to be in alignment with said dot for someone to have the ability to attach the lens on the camera. Of course this might need a certain amount of getting used to, it actually makes changing lenses quicker and easier.

Without lens attached, you will notice the sensor sitting right behind the plane on the bayonet mount. Just like the mount itself, the sensor is new. Measuring 13.2×8.8mm this “CX” format imaging chip has double expanse of the most popular imagers utilised in compact and bridge cameras much like the Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, but only about 50 % of the location of an standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip has a 1.36x longer diagonal compared to Nikon CX imager. Since Four Thirds features a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” calculates to about 2.72, meaning that a 10mm lens has approximately a similar 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 in terms of its angle-of-view range.

The remainder of the Nikon J1’s faceplate is virtually empty, featuring merely the lens release, a receiver for that optional ML-L3 infrared handheld remote control, two narrow slits for the microphone both sides from the lens, plus an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There’s no grip at all within the front on the Nikon 1 J1.

There’s two options for powering around the Nikon 1 J1. You may either makes use of the on/off button sitting near the shutter release or, when you have a collapsible-barrel contact attached, you can simply press the unlocking button about the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an action that creates your camera to modify on automatically. It is an ingenious solution since you need to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes approximately a second - absolutely nothing to write home about however decent and entirely adequate.

You may frame your shots utilizing the rear screen - there is no electronic viewfinder as for the V1 model, an important difference between the 2. The LCD screen is a three-inch, 460,000-dot display that features wide viewing angles, great definition and accurate colours but only so-so visibility in strong daylight. We missed the EVF when using the J1 alongside the V1, in bright sunlit conditions or with all the 30-110mm telezoom lens as holding the digital camera around eye-level helped to stabilise the lens and avoid camera shake.

The control layout is quite peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 features a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks many of the shooting modes which might be usually entirely on similar dials - especially P, A, S and M - even though it has enough room to support them. These modes can be purchased for the J1 however, you ought to dive in the rather long-winded rather than entirely logical menu to discover them. The J1’s mode dial merely 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. Of course this isn’t a bad choice of functions, the reality that there’s no ISO button will doubtlessly produce a great deal of photographers enthusiastic about purchasing the Nikon J1 for being unhappy.

There exists a button on the rear labelled “F” but alas, it’s not a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it allows you to quickly select from the continuous shooting modes, when it’s in Video mode it lets you toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There are two more vital controls about the back in the camera, together with a scroll wheel around the four-way pad along with a rocker switch marked having a loupe icon. The scroll wheel is utilized to line the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (when you’ve found them inside the menu, that may be), even though the rocker switch controls the aperture. Exactly why it provides a loupe icon alongside it truly is until this control is needed to focus upon an image to check on for critical concentrate Playback mode. As a final point, you will find four small buttons round the navigation pad, flush resistant to the rear panel with the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.

Just what exactly are shooting modes for the mode dial all about? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked that has a green camera icon, is to try and should be quite often. With the mode dial set to this particular position, you can pick your required exposure mode on the menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a great auto mode when the camera analyses the scene before its lens and picks exactly what thinks may be the right mode for any particular one scene. You may also choose one from the conventional PASM modes, which present you with full menu access plus the capability 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, only from your menu, as mentioned above.

Certainly there’s AWB and auto ISO at the same time, with the latter arriving three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) letting you specify how high you want the camera to search in the event the light gets low. You may also choose from three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, in which the camera takes control of what it focusses on (this is simply not a fantastic mode to obtain since your default as the camera obviously can’t read your mind and could consentrate on another thing than your actual subject); Single Point, in places you can select one of 135 AF points starting with hitting OK and moving the active AF point across the frame using the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, that you pick your subject, press OK and let your camera in order to that subject mainly because it moves around, given that doesn’t necessarily leave the frame obviously.

The Nikon 1 J1 has an intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that mixes contrast- and phase-difference detection similarly as being the Fujifilm F300EXR did. This permits the Nikon 1 J1 to concentrate extremely quickly in good light, even on the moving subject. The organization claims the Nikon 1 system cameras are definitely the fastest-focusing machines on this planet, this also matches our experience - provided that there’s enough light. When light levels drop, your camera switches to contrast-detect AF which, though faster compared to most cameras, isn’t you’d like another method. It is usually the digital camera that decides which AF approach to use - the consumer doesn’t have a relation to this.

In most cases, the J1 will most likely only turn to contrast detection when light levels are low. In good light, we were able to take sharp photos of fast-moving subjects. The Nikon J1 certainly won’t disappoint here. Manual focusing is also possible, even though Nikon 1 lenses do not possess focus rings. In order to focus manually, you initially need to hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK after which use the scroll wheel to modify focus. To work with you with this, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central portion of the image and displays a rudimentary focus scale across the right side on the frame - but those include the only focusing aids you get. There isn’t any peaking function available as on some rival models.

The J1 posseses an electronic shutter (the V1 has an analog shutter). It’s totally silent (the attention confirmation beep can be disabled from your menu) and allows using shutter speeds you wish 1/16,000th of your second and, together with the Electronic Hi setting selected, helps you to shoot full-resolution stills at 60 fps. Note however that while this is a major achievement, it’s on a a buffer that can only hold 12 raw files. Additionally, using this mode precludes AF tracking - you have to lower the frame rate to 10fps if you need that -, and the viewfinder goes blank as the pictures are being taken. The linksys e2000 application you can imagine where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really be convenient is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. When it reaches this rate, a few 5 bracketed shots might be used less than 0.1 second, rendering small movements that may otherwise pose alignment problems - like leaves being blown inside wind - a non-issue. Alas, the Nikon J1 will not offer this type of feature - in fact it does not offer autoexposure bracketing at all.

Getting to the video mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. To start with, the camera might be set to shoot Full HD footage, therefore you even arrive at select from 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, determined by whether you want to assist progressive or interlaced video. If you can’t need Full HD, there is also 720p @ 60fps, and that is really smooth and still counts as hi-d. Secondly, you have full manual control over exposure in video mode. It is deemed an option; you don’t have to shoot in M mode but you can if that is the thing you need. Thirdly, you have fast, continuous AF in video mode, and delay pills work well, specially in good light. Movies are compressed while using H.264 codec and stored as MOV files. You can find separate shutter release buttons for stills and video, and due to this - and also the massive processing power of the Nikon J1 - it is possible to take multiple full-resolution stills even while recording HD video. This works vice versa too - you may capture your favorite shows clip even when the mode dial is within the Still Image position, by simply pressing the red movie shutter release. We’ve discovered that in this case the camera will record the playback quality at 720p/60fps.

As well as being able to shooting regular movies in HD quality, the Nikon 1 J1 may 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, nevertheless the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo and stuff like that. These videos are played back at 30fps, and that is more than 13x slower compared to capture speed of 400fps, allowing you to get creative and show the world several interesting phenomena which happen too soon to look at instantly. The Nikon J1 goes further through providing a 1200fps video mode, even so the resolution and overall quality is way too poor for your for being genuinely useful.

Your third icon on the mode dial is short for Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows the digital camera to capture at the very least 20 photos at a single press of the shutter release, including some that were taken before fully depressing the button. The digital camera analyses the individual pictures from the series and discards 15 ones, keeping only the five who’s thinks are best in terms of sharpness and composition. This feature can be genuinely useful when photographing fast action and fleeting moments.

Finally, you will find there’s so-called Motion Snapshot mode in which the camera records a shorter high-definition movie - whose buffering starts for a half-press on the shutter release, so again includes events that had happened prior to button was fully depressed - and also takes a still photograph. The movie and the still image are held 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 frequently. (In the event you comprehend the video on a computer, it will play back at normal speed, without sound, and this mode is absolutely only interesting when you comprehend the clip in-camera or hook you 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. Your camera runs using a compact EN-EL20 battery to its V1 big brother, and it is consequently able to produce much less shots on one charge, managing around 230, eventhough it helps to create you body scaled-down. The camera’s tripod socket is manufactured out of metal which is situated in line while using lens’ optical axis. This implies that changing batteries or cards is not possible as you move the J1 is attached to a tripod, as the hinges with the battery/card compartment door are far too nearby the tripod mount.

So, how did we like using the Nikon 1 J1? On one side, we liked it a good deal. In good light, its auto-focus technique is indeed faster than basically anything we’ve used to date, the ability to track and lock concentrate on numerous truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding a lot of sharp images in situations where our keeper rates never been very good. 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 that it is modest guide number might suggest, with the clever design minimising red-eye.

However, the Nikon J1 has its own share of frustrating idiosyncrasies beginning from the person interface that makes you dive in to the menu to access functions as easy as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons with a finished product, they could no less than increase the risk for “F” button customisable by way of a firmware update. Also, to find out an avid button for exposure compensation - a positive thing - I didn’t are able to activate a live histogram, though it would’ve made exposure compensation much more useful and simple to use. Again, this might more likely fixed in firmware.

We missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, especially in bright light or with all the telephoto lens which doesn’t lend itself well to being held out at arms length. The J1 merely has a glass dust shield since it is defense against unwanted debris, rather than the more proactive sensor cleaning unit the V1 offers, as well as the smaller battery shows that you will need to buy another that you arrive at the day’s heavy shooting. The possible lack of an accessory port signifies that almost no Nikon 1 accessories are works with the J1, such as external flash and GPS unit.

Yet another thing we did not like could be that the camera would always show the photo just taken for a couple of seconds onscreen, and that we did not try to turn this instant postview function completely off (although you can at least cancel it via a half-press with the shutter release). Finally, whilst the camera is normally fast and responsive, the digital camera takes overly long to awaken from sleep mode if it is idle for a while, resulting in quite a few missed shots.

All things considered, the Nikon 1 J1 can be a smaller than average and compact, high-performance system camera that they like its government would use several tweaks to the user interface to raised suit the requirements of serious amateurs. The intended target audience of casual users will cherish it because of its sheer speed, built-in flash, compact size as well as the fun features it offers. We will now observe the Nikon 1 J1 fared in the image quality department.