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The Nikon 1 J1 is often a stylish compact system camera which has a 10-megapixel “CX” format sensor as well as the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Boasting continuous shooting speeds as high as 60 fps at full resolution, Full HD video capture, an ultra-fast hybrid auto-focus system, Smart Photo Selector and 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 on board is usually a built-in pop-up flash having a guide amount of 5, a 3 inch rear display and an electronic shutter. Charging $649.95 / 549.99 that has a 10-30mm contact lens, $699.95 / 599.99 having a 10mm pancake lens, or $799.95 / 699.99 in a very double-lens kit using 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 constructed from aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts and is also therefore heavier than what you know already according to its size alone, weighing in at 234g with the body only. What’s more, it feels better made than the official product shots maybe have you believe. By having an essentially grip-less design, the Nikon J1 can be quite much a two-handed affair that requires you to support the camera’s weight within the left hand, clutching the lens, and make use of your right hand for balance and operating the controls. This is really an excellent since it pushes you to pay attention to holding your camera properly, which experts claim goes a considerable ways towards avoiding shake-induced blur as part of your photos.

The camera’s clean, minimalist front plate is dominated by the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Rather than like a scaled-down version with the out of date F mount, it is a fresh design that provides 100% electronic communication involving the attached lens plus the camera body, thanks to several contacts. Exactly like for the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, there is a white dot for easy lens alignment, though it has moved from the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) up with the mount. The lenses themselves use a short silver ridge within the lens barrel, which should be in alignment with said dot to enable one to have the ability to attach the lens towards the camera. Even though this may need a certain amount of adjusting to, it actually makes changing lenses quicker and much easier.

With no lens attached, you can view the sensor sitting directly behind the plane with the bayonet mount. Such as the mount itself, the sensor is completely new. Measuring 13.2×8.8mm this “CX” format imaging chip has double floor of the biggest imagers utilized in compact and bridge cameras such as the Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, only about 50 % the region of an standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip has a 1.36x longer diagonal as opposed to Nikon CX imager. Provided that Four Thirds features a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” calculates to about 2.72, and thus a 10mm lens has approximately exactly 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 just the lens release, a receiver to the optional ML-L3 infrared handy remote control, two narrow slits to the microphone either sides of the lens, along with an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There is absolutely no grip by any means within the front of the Nikon 1 J1.

There are two strategies to powering about the Nikon 1 V1. You can either utilize on/off button sitting near the shutter release or, if you have a collapsible-barrel contact attached, you can just press the unlocking button on the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an act that triggers your camera to switch on automatically. It is really an ingenious solution as you need to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes about another - nothing to write home about but nevertheless decent and entirely adequate.

You’ll be able to frame your shots using the rear screen - there is absolutely no electronic viewfinder as within the V1 model, a vital difference between the 2 main. The LCD screen is 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 while using the J1 alongside the V1, in a choice of 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 the majority of the shooting modes that happen to be usually found on similar dials - most notably P, A, S and M - even though it has enough room to fit them. These modes are offered within the J1 nevertheless, you need to dive in to the rather long-winded and never entirely logical menu to get them. The J1’s mode dial only has four settings, Photo, Video, Motion Snapshot and Smart Photo Selector. The four-way controller also 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 is not a bad number of functions, the truth that there is absolutely no ISO button will doubtlessly produce a wide range of photographers thinking about getting the Nikon J1 being unhappy.

There exists a button within the rear labelled “F” but alas, this is not a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it permits you to quickly pick from the continuous shooting modes, whilst in Video mode it allows you to toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There are two more vital controls on the back on the camera, including a scroll wheel throughout the four-way pad as well as a rocker switch marked using a loupe icon. The scroll wheel is utilized to create the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (when you have found them from the menu, that’s), while the rocker switch controls the aperture. The key reason why it provides a loupe icon close to it really is that control is employed to zoom in on an image to evaluate for critical concentrate Playback mode. As a final point, you will discover four small buttons about the navigation pad, flush up against the rear panel of the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.

Precisely what are shooting modes within the mode dial information about? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked which has a green camera icon, is to try and should be usually. With all the mode dial set to the position, you may pick your desired exposure mode through the menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a brilliant automatic mode when the camera analyses the scene in front of its lens and picks what it thinks may be the right mode for that specific scene. You may also find out of the conventional PASM modes, which provide you with full menu access and also the capacity to manually set the aperture, shutter speed, or both (Program AE Shift comes in P mode). ISO and white balance may also be manually selected, only on 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 want your camera to search if the light gets low. You may also select three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, in which the camera takes management of what it really focusses on (it is not an incredible mode to obtain as the default as the camera obviously can’t read your thoughts and may focus on something else entirely than your actual subject); Single Point, in which you can make considered one of 135 AF points beginning with hitting OK then moving the active AF point about the frame utilizing the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, that you pick your subject, press OK and enable your camera to trace that subject since it moves around, given that this doesn’t happen leave the frame naturally.

The Nikon 1 J1 posseses an intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that combines contrast- and phase-difference detection in a similar fashion because Fujifilm F300EXR did. This permits the Nikon 1 J1 to focus extremely quickly in good light, even on the moving subject. This company claims the Nikon 1 system cameras will be the fastest-focusing machines in the world, and this matches our experience - provided that there’s enough light. When light levels drop, the camera switches to contrast-detect AF which, though faster compared to most cameras, isn’t nearly you wish one other method. It’s always your camera that decides which AF solution to use - an individual doesn’t have a influence on this.

Generally speaking, the J1 in most cases only head for contrast detection when light levels are low. In good light, we were capable of taking sharp photos of fast-moving subjects. The Nikon J1 certainly does not disappoint here. Manual focusing can be possible, although the Nikon 1 lenses don’t have focus rings. If you want to focus manually, you first of all should hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK and make use of the scroll wheel to focus. To help you with this, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central part of the image and displays a rudimentary focus scale over the right side from the frame - but those include the only focusing helps you get. There isn’t any peaking function available as on some rival models.

The J1 comes with an electronic shutter (the V1 also has a mechanical shutter). It is absolutely silent (the main objective confirmation beep can be disabled in the menu) and allows the usage of shutter speeds you’d like 1/16,000th of your second and, while using Electronic Hi setting selected, helps you to shoot full-resolution stills at 60 frames per second. Note however that although this is a major achievement, it’s on a a buffer that can only hold 12 raw files. Additionally, the usage of this mode precludes AF tracking - you will need to lower the frame rate to 10fps if you would like that -, and also the viewfinder goes blank even though the pictures will be taken. About the only application we can think about where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really come in handy is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. At this rate, some 5 bracketed shots may very well be drawn in less than 0.1 second, rendering small movements which could otherwise pose alignment problems - like leaves being blown inside the wind - a non-issue. Alas, the Nikon J1 isn’t going to offer such a feature - the truth is this doesn’t offer autoexposure bracketing in any respect.

Selling it to it mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. Most notably, you might be set to shoot Full HD footage, so you even arrive at choose from 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, dependant upon whether you’d like to work together with progressive or interlaced video. Unless you need Full HD, additionally, there is 720p @ 60fps, which can be really smooth but still counts as high-definition. Secondly, you get full manual treating exposure in video mode. It becomes an option; you don’t have to shoot in M mode nevertheless, you can in the event that’s the thing you need. Thirdly, you get fast, continuous AF in video mode, and delay well, especially in 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 due to this - as well as the massive processing power from the Nikon J1 - you can take multiple full-resolution stills whilst recording HD video. This works vice versa too - it is possible to capture a film 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 instance the digital camera will usually record the video at 720p/60fps.

And also 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 less as well as the aspect ratio is surely an ultra-widescreen 2.67:1, nevertheless the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo etc. These videos are played back at 30fps, which can be more than 13x slower compared to the capture speed of 400fps, letting you get creative and show the world numerous interesting phenomena which happen prematurely to see or watch in real time. The Nikon J1 goes even further by giving a 1200fps video mode, even so the resolution and overall quality is just too poor for the to become genuinely useful.

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

Finally, there’s a so-called Motion Snapshot mode the place that the camera records a concise high-definition movie - whose buffering starts in a half-press with the shutter release, so again includes events that have happened prior to the button was fully depressed - and also requires a still photograph. The movie and the still image are residing in separate files even so the camera can combine them in to a single slow-motion clip with vocals. It’s fun but we not able to really envision people by using this shooting mode regularly. (If you look at the video on the computer, it is going to play back at normal speed, without sound, this mode is actually only interesting should you comprehend the clip in-camera or hook you around an HDTV through an HDMI cable.)

The Nikon J1 stores pics and vids on SD/SDHC/SDXC memory cards, and props up the fastest UHS-I speed class. The camera runs using a smaller EN-EL20 battery to the V1 our government, which is consequently able to produce much less shots for a passing fancy charge, managing around 230, even though it helps to produce the camera body more compact. The camera’s tripod socket is made of metal and it is found in line with all the lens’ optical axis. This actually also means that changing batteries or cards isn’t feasible as you move the J1 is installed on a tripod, as being the hinges in the battery/card compartment door are way too near the tripod mount.

So, how did we love to using the Nikon 1 J1? Similarly, we liked it a great deal. In good light, its auto-focus product is indeed faster than just about anything we’ve used thus far, the ability to track and lock target a selection of truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding lots of sharp images in situations where our keeper rates haven’t been very 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 that its modest guide number might suggest, with all the clever design minimising red-eye.

Alternatively, the Nikon J1 does have it’s share of frustrating idiosyncrasies you start with the consumer interface that forces you to dive into the menu to get into functions as easy as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons to your finished product, they may at the least have the “F” button customisable via a firmware update. Also, you will find a passionate button for exposure compensation - that is a great thing - Some find a way to activate a live histogram, eventhough it would’ve made exposure compensation considerably more useful and straightforward to use. Again, this can more likely fixed in firmware.

We missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, specifically 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 because it’s defense against unwanted debris, rather than the more proactive sensor cleaning unit that the V1 offers, plus the smaller battery shows that you’ll need to buy another that you get through a day’s heavy shooting. Lacking an accessory port signifies that almost not one of the Nikon 1 accessories are that will work with the J1, including the external flash and GPS unit.

One more thing we didn’t like was that the camera would always show the image just taken for some seconds onscreen, and now we wouldn’t be capable of turn this instant postview function completely off (while you can at least cancel it via a half-press on the shutter release). Finally, whilst the camera is usually fast and responsive, the digital camera takes excessively long to wake up from sleep mode if it has become idle for a short time, contributing to several missed shots.

All things considered, the Nikon 1 J1 is often a small , compact, high-performance system camera that like its government might use some tweaks to the graphical user interface to increase suit the requirements of serious amateurs. The intended target audience of casual users will require to it for the sheer speed, built-in flash, compact size as well as the fun features there is. We will now find out how the Nikon 1 J1 fared within the image quality department.