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The Nikon 1 J1 is usually a stylish compact system camera having a 10-megapixel “CX” format sensor as well as the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Boasting continuous shooting speeds as high as 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 also offers more conventional shooting modes like Programmed Auto, Aperture and Shutter Priority, and also Metered Manual. Also on board is really a built-in pop-up flash with a guide amount of 5, a 3 inch rear display as well as an electronic shutter. Charging $649.95 / 549.99 using a 10-30mm standard zoom lens, $699.95 / 599.99 using 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 go on sale later this month.

The Nikon 1 J1 is mainly crafted from aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts and it is therefore heavier than you would think dependant on its size alone, coming in at 234g for that body only. Additionally, it feels higher quality compared to official product shots maybe have you believe. Having an essentially grip-less design, the Nikon J1 can be quite much a two-handed affair that needs you to secure the camera’s weight inside the left-hand, clutching the lens, and use your right hand for balance and operating the controls. This is actually the best thing as it pushes you to focus on holding the digital camera properly, which goes quite a distance towards avoiding shake-induced blur as part of your photos.

The camera’s clean, minimalist front plate is covered with the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. As an alternative to to be a scaled-down version on the ancient F mount, it is a completely new design providing you with 100% electronic communication between your attached lens as well as the camera body, for 12 contacts. Much like within the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, we have a white dot for quick lens alignment, even though it has moved through the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) up from the mount. The lenses themselves include a short silver ridge for the lens barrel, which has to be in alignment with said dot to ensure you to definitely be capable of attach the lens to the camera. Of course this may need a little bit of acclamating yourself with, this process makes changing lenses quicker and simpler.

Without the need of lens attached, you can see the sensor sitting directly behind the plane with the bayonet mount. Just like the mount itself, the sensor is completely new. Measuring 13.2×8.8mm this “CX” format imaging chip has twice the area of the most popular imagers utilized in compact and bridge cameras much like the Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, only most the region of your standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip has a 1.36x longer diagonal as opposed to Nikon CX imager. Considering that Four Thirds carries a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” computes to about 2.72, which means that a 10mm lens has approximately the identical angle of view to be 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 in terms of its angle-of-view range.

The remainder of the Nikon J1’s faceplate is actually empty, featuring merely the lens release, a receiver to the optional ML-L3 infrared handy remote control, two narrow slits to the microphone both sides with the lens, and an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There is absolutely no grip at all around the front of the Nikon 1 J1.

There are 2 strategies to powering on the Nikon 1 J1. Either utilize the on/off button sitting near the shutter release or, should you have a collapsible-barrel zoom lens attached, just press the unlocking button for the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an action which causes the digital camera to interchange on automatically. This is an ingenious solution as you have to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes about a second - absolutely nothing to write home about but nonetheless decent and entirely adequate.

You can frame your shots with all the rear screen - there is no electronic viewfinder as on the V1 model, a vital distinction between the 2. The LCD screen is often a three-inch, 460,000-dot display that boasts wide viewing angles, great definition and accurate colours only so-so visibility in strong daylight. We missed the EVF aided by the J1 alongside the V1, in both bright sunlit conditions or aided by the 30-110mm telezoom lens as holding the camera approximately eye-level helped to stabilise the lens and get away from trembling camera.

The control layout is reasonably peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 includes a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks a lot of the shooting modes that are usually situated on similar dials - especially P, A, S and M - eventhough it has enough room to match them. These modes can be obtained around the J1 nevertheless, you should dive to the rather long-winded rather than 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. Even though this is not a bad collection of functions, the reality that there is absolutely no ISO button will doubtlessly create a great deal of photographers considering buying the Nikon J1 to be unhappy.

We have a button for the rear labelled “F” but alas, this is not a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it lets you quickly pick from the continuous shooting modes, during Video mode it allows you to toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There are two more essential controls about the back on the camera, together with a scroll wheel throughout the four-way pad and also a rocker switch marked using a loupe icon. The scroll wheel is needed to line the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (when you’ve found them inside menu, that is), as you move the rocker switch controls the aperture. The reason it provides a loupe icon alongside it really is this control is utilized to focus upon an image to check on for critical concentrate Playback mode. Last but not least, you can find four small buttons round the navigation pad, flush up against the rear panel from the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.

Just what exactly are shooting modes around the mode dial exactly about? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked having a green camera icon, is to try and should be most of the time. Together with the mode dial set to this position, you can pick your desired exposure mode in the menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a brilliant auto mode the location where the camera analyses the scene looking at its lens and picks what it really thinks may be the right mode for that exact scene. Also you can make a choice from the conventional PASM modes, which supply you with full menu access and also the ability to manually set the aperture, shutter speed, or both (Program AE Shift will come in P mode). ISO and white balance can also be manually selected, only on the menu, as stated earlier.

Of course there’s AWB and auto ISO also, together with the latter arriving three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) enabling you to specify how high you would like the camera to look in the event the light gets low. You can even choose between three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, when the camera takes charge of what it really focusses on (it’s not a great mode to have as the default since the camera obviously can’t read the mind and could concentrate on something else entirely than your actual subject); Single Point, the place you can come up among 135 AF points first by hitting OK after which moving the active AF point throughout the frame with all the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, that you pick your subject, press OK and invite the digital camera to follow that subject the way it moves around, so long as it does not leave the frame obviously.

The Nikon 1 J1 comes with an intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that combines contrast- and phase-difference detection in a similar way as being the Fujifilm F300EXR did. This allows the Nikon 1 J1 to concentrate extremely quickly in good light, even on a moving subject. The business claims the Nikon 1 system cameras would be the fastest-focusing machines on the planet, 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 on most cameras, isn’t as soon as additional method. It really is the camera that decides which AF method to use - an individual doesn’t have any influence on this.

Generally speaking, the J1 usually only make use of 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 doesn’t disappoint here. Manual focusing is usually possible, although Nikon 1 lenses do not have focus rings. If you need to focus manually, first you ought to hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK and after that make use of the scroll wheel to focus. To assist you using this type of, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central portion of the image and displays a rudimentary focus scale on the right side of the frame - but those are the only focusing aids you get. There’s no peaking function available as on some rival models.

The J1 posseses an electronic shutter (the V1 also has a mechanical shutter). It’s totally silent (the main objective confirmation beep may be disabled through the menu) and allows using shutter speeds as soon as 1/16,000th of a second and, with all the Electronic Hi setting selected, permits you to shoot full-resolution stills at 60 fps. Note however that while this is the major achievement, it’s tied to a buffer that could only hold 12 raw files. Additionally, the utilization of this mode precludes AF tracking - you must lower the frame rate to 10fps if you wish that -, plus the viewfinder goes blank as the pictures are being taken. The only application you can think of where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really be convenient is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. At this rate, a number of 5 bracketed shots might be consumed in a lot less than 0.1 second, rendering small movements that could otherwise pose alignment problems - like leaves being blown in the wind - a non-issue. Alas, the Nikon J1 won’t offer this sort of feature - in truth no offer autoexposure bracketing in any way.

Selling it to it mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. To start with, your camera can be set to shoot Full HD footage, so you even be able to choose between 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, dependant upon whether you’d rather assist progressive or interlaced video. If you do not need Full HD, in addition there are 720p @ 60fps, that is really smooth nevertheless counts as high definition. Secondly, you get full manual treatments for exposure in video mode. This is an option; you don’t need 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, particularly good light. Movies are compressed utilizing the H.264 codec and stored as MOV files. There are separate shutter release buttons for stills and video, and thanks to this - and also the massive processing power in the Nikon J1 - it is possible to take multiple full-resolution stills whilst recording HD video. This works the other way round too - you’ll be able to capture a motion picture clip even when the mode dial is in the Still Image position, merely by pressing the red movie shutter release. We’ve found out that in such a case the camera will invariably record the recording at 720p/60fps.

And also being effective at shooting regular movies in HD quality, the Nikon 1 J1 may shoot video at 400fps for slow-motion playback. The resolution is lower and the aspect ratio is undoubtedly an ultra-widescreen 2.67:1, however the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo etc. These videos are played back at 30fps, that is over 13x slower as opposed to capture speed of 400fps, permitting you to get creative and show the world several interesting phenomena which happen too soon to observe in real time. The Nikon J1 goes even further through providing a 1200fps video mode, but the resolution and overall quality is way too poor for your for being genuinely useful.

Another icon on the mode dial means Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows the camera to capture a minimum of 20 photos at the single press of the shutter release, including some that had been taken before fully depressing the button. The digital camera analyses anyone pictures inside series and discards 15 of those, keeping just the five who’s thinks might be best with regard to sharpness and composition. This feature could 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 for a half-press on the shutter release, so again includes events that had happened before the button was fully depressed - plus requires a still photograph. The movie plus the still image are residing in separate files however the camera can combine them in to a single slow-motion clip with music. It’s fun but we can not really envision people making use of this shooting mode all the time. (In case you look at the video on the computer, it’ll play back at normal speed, without sound, so this mode is absolutely only interesting should you see the clip in-camera or hook you up to an HDTV via 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. Your camera is run on a compact EN-EL20 battery to its V1 our government, and is consequently capable of producing considerably less shots about the same charge, managing around 230, although it helps to produce you body small. The camera’s tripod socket is made from metal and is particularly found in line together with the lens’ optical axis. This too ensures that changing batteries or cards is not possible as you move the J1 is mounted on a tripod, as the hinges of the battery/card compartment door are extremely nearby the tripod mount.

So, how did we love to while using the Nikon 1 J1? On one hand, we liked it a lot. In good light, its auto-focus method is indeed faster than essentially 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 haven’t ever been quite high. Additionally, its high-speed continuous shooting modes have allowed us to capture interesting moments that we’d have surely missed if we had used a slower camera. The built-in pop-up flash proved more useful what has modest guide number might suggest, using the clever design minimising red-eye.

Conversely, the Nikon J1 does have it’s share of frustrating idiosyncrasies beginning with anyone interface that makes you dive into your menu to reach functions as basic as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons to a finished product, they are able to at the very least result in the “F” button customisable by using a firmware update. Also, to find out a passionate button for exposure compensation - that is a positive thing - I didnrrrt be capable of activate an active histogram, although it would have made exposure compensation additional useful and simple to work with. Again, this can apt to be fixed in firmware.

We also missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, specifically in bright light or while using the telephoto lens which does not lend itself well to being held out at arms length. The J1 only has a glass dust shield because it’s defense against unwanted debris, as opposed to the more proactive sensor cleaning unit that this V1 offers, and also the smaller battery means that you’ll want to buy an additional you to definitely get through a day’s heavy shooting. The lack of an accessory port means that almost no Nikon 1 accessories are that will work with the J1, like the external flash and GPS unit.

One more thing we would not like could be that the camera would always show the photo just taken for a couple of seconds onscreen, so we didn’t find a way to turn this instant postview function completely off (even if you can at least cancel it by using a half-press in the shutter release). Finally, even though the camera is normally fast and responsive, the camera takes overly long to wake up from sleep mode in the event it continues to be idle for quite a while, producing numerous missed shots.

All things considered, the Nikon 1 J1 is really a smaller than average compact, high-performance system camera they like its larger are able to use a couple of tweaks to its user interface to raised suit the requirements of serious amateurs. The intended target audience of casual users should it for its sheer speed, built-in flash, lightweight and the fun features it offers. Let’s now discover how the Nikon 1 J1 fared inside the image quality department.