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The Nikon 1 J1 is often a stylish compact system camera featuring a 10-megapixel “CX” format sensor plus 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 plus 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 fully briefed is really a built-in pop-up flash having a guide quantity of 5, a 3 inch rear display with an electronic shutter. Charging $649.95 / 549.99 having a 10-30mm contact lens, $699.95 / 599.99 with 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 sale later this month.

The Nikon 1 J1 is mainly made out of aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts and it is therefore heavier than what you know already determined by its size alone, coming in at 234g for your body only. What’s more, it feels better made 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 will need one to secure the camera’s weight from the left-hand, clutching the lens, and utilize your right hand for balance and operating the controls. This is really an excellent since it forces you to look closely at holding you properly, which experts claim goes far 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. As opposed to like a scaled-down version on the out of date F mount, it’s really a brand-new design that provides 100% electronic communication relating to the attached lens and the camera body, for a dozen contacts. Just like about the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, there’s a white dot for simple lens alignment, although it has moved through the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) to # 1 on the mount. The lenses themselves come with a short silver ridge on the lens barrel, which must be in alignment with said dot to ensure that you be capable of attach the lens to your camera. Of course this might need a certain amount of getting used to, this task makes changing lenses quicker and simpler.

With no lens attached, you will see the sensor sitting right 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 floor of the largest imagers used in compact and bridge cameras such as the Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, only most the vicinity of your standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip features a 1.36x longer diagonal than the Nikon CX imager. Given that Four Thirds carries a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” works out to around 2.72, and thus a 10mm lens has approximately exactly the same 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 similar to a 27.2-81.6mm (or, practically speaking, 28-80mm) FX lens with regards to its angle-of-view range.

The rest of the Nikon J1’s faceplate is actually empty, featuring only the lens release, a receiver for that optional ML-L3 infrared handheld control, two narrow slits for the microphone either side in the lens, as well as an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There is not any grip by any means within the front from the Nikon 1 J1.

The two main ways of powering for the Nikon 1 J1. You may utilize on/off button sitting near the shutter release or, if you have a collapsible-barrel the len’s attached, you can just press the unlocking button within the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an action that causes the camera to interchange on automatically. It becomes an ingenious solution since you need to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes approximately another - not even attempt to write home about but nevertheless decent and entirely adequate.

You can frame your shots using the rear screen - there is absolutely no electronic viewfinder as around the V1 model, an integral difference between the 2 main. The LCD screen is often 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 with all the J1 alongside the V1, in either 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 prevent trembling camera.

The control layout is rather peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 includes a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks most of the shooting modes that are usually seen on similar dials - particularly P, A, S and M - even though it has enough room to match them. These modes are offered within the J1 but you ought to dive in the rather long-winded but not entirely logical menu to discover them. The J1’s mode dial just 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. Even though this isn’t a bad range of functions, the truth that there’s no ISO button will doubtlessly cause a lot of photographers thinking about buying the Nikon J1 to become unhappy.

There is a button for the rear labelled “F” but alas, it’s not a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it allows you to quickly make a choice from the continuous shooting modes, when it’s in Video mode it allows you to toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There are two more vital controls about the back on 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 can be used to create the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (after you have found them inside the menu, that’s), as the rocker switch controls the aperture. The reason it’s a loupe icon close to it truly is until this control is employed to zoom in with an image to confirm for critical concentrate Playback mode. Lastly, you’ll find four small buttons throughout the navigation pad, flush from the rear panel on the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.

What exactly are the type shooting modes within the mode dial information on? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked using a green camera icon, is where you may wish to be most of the time. Together with the mode dial set to this position, you are able to pick your desired exposure mode on the menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a great automatic mode the location where the camera analyses the scene in front of its lens and picks exactly what thinks may be the right way of that exact scene. It’s also possible to select one with the conventional PASM modes, which give you full menu access and the chance to manually set the aperture, shutter speed, or both (Program AE Shift can be purchased in P mode). ISO and white balance will also be manually selected, only through the menu, as already mentioned.

Certainly there’s AWB and auto ISO as well, with the latter arriving three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) letting you specify how high you want your camera to visit if your light gets low. You may also select from three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, when the camera takes power over exactly what it focusses on (it is not an incredible mode to obtain as your default because the camera obviously can’t read your head and might give attention to another thing than your actual subject); Single Point, the place you can decide one among 135 AF points frist by hitting OK and moving the active AF point about the frame using the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, the place you pick your subject, press OK and let the camera to track that subject as it moves around, providing this doesn’t happen leave the frame naturally.

The Nikon 1 J1 comes with a intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that mixes contrast- and phase-difference detection in a similar way because the Fujifilm F300EXR did. This enables the Nikon 1 J1 to target extremely quickly in good light, even on a moving subject. The organization claims the Nikon 1 system cameras would be the fastest-focusing machines on the globe, and also this matches our experience - as long as 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 fast as additional method. It really is the digital camera that decides which AF technique to use - anyone has no affect this.

Most of the time, the J1 will most likely only use 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 will not disappoint here. Manual focusing is additionally possible, even though the Nikon 1 lenses would not have focus rings. If you need to focus manually, you initially need to hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK after which make use of the scroll wheel to modify focus. To help you out with this, 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 are the only focusing helps you get. There’s no peaking function available as on some rival models.

The J1 has an electronic shutter (the V1 boasts an analog shutter). It’s totally silent (the main objective confirmation beep may be disabled through the menu) and allows the use of shutter speeds as soon as 1/16,000th of a second and, together with the Electronic Hi setting selected, enables you to shoot full-resolution stills at 60 fps. Note however that although it is a major achievement, it’s restricted by a buffer that may only hold 12 raw files. Additionally, using this mode precludes AF tracking - you need to lower the frame rate to 10fps if you wish that -, plus the viewfinder goes blank while the pictures will be taken. One application we could imagine where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really be useful is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. At this rate, several 5 bracketed shots may be consumed in a lot less than 0.1 second, rendering small movements that will otherwise pose alignment problems - like leaves being blown inside wind - a non-issue. Alas, the Nikon J1 will not offer this kind of feature - actually it won’t offer autoexposure bracketing by any means.

Moving on to the video mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. Above all, the camera might be set to shoot Full HD footage, and you also even reach choose between 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, determined by whether you’d rather use progressive or interlaced video. Should you not need Full HD, there is also 720p @ 60fps, which can be really smooth nevertheless counts as high definition. Secondly, you get full manual treating exposure in video mode. It is an option; you don’t need to shoot in M mode however you can if that’s what you need. Thirdly, you obtain fast, continuous AF in video mode, and delay pills work well, specially in good light. Movies are compressed with all the 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 with the Nikon J1 - you are able to take multiple full-resolution stills at the same time recording HD video. This works vice versa too - it is possible to capture a film clip even when the mode dial influences Still Image position, by just pressing the red movie shutter release. We’ve found out that in this case the camera will forever record it at 720p/60fps.

In addition to being effective at shooting regular movies in HD quality, the Nikon 1 J1 can also shoot video at 400fps for slow-motion playback. The resolution is less along with the aspect ratio is surely an ultra-widescreen 2.67:1, but the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo and so forth. These videos are played back at 30fps, and that is over 13x slower versus the capture speed of 400fps, helping you to get creative and show the world a range of interesting phenomena that happen too quickly to see instantly. The Nikon J1 goes a little more forward by offering a 1200fps video mode, even so the resolution and overall quality is way too poor for that to be genuinely useful.

The 3rd icon within the mode dial stands for Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows you to capture no less than 20 photos for a single press in the shutter release, including some which are taken before fully depressing the button. You analyses the individual pictures in the series and discards 15 of which, keeping merely the five it thinks would be best in terms of sharpness and composition. This feature is usually genuinely useful when photographing fast action and fleeting moments.

Finally, we have a so-called Motion Snapshot mode when the camera records a brief high-definition movie - whose buffering starts at a half-press on the shutter release, so again includes events that had happened before the button was fully depressed - as well as needs a still photograph. The film plus the still image are held in separate files however the camera can combine them to a single slow-motion clip with music. It’s fun but we simply cannot really envision people employing this shooting mode often. (When you view the video using a computer, it’s going to play back at normal speed, without sound, which means this mode is really only interesting should you comprehend the clip in-camera or hook the camera up to an HDTV via an HDMI cable.)

The Nikon J1 stores photos and videos on SD/SDHC/SDXC memory cards, and sports ths fastest UHS-I speed class. You runs using a compact EN-EL20 battery to its V1 your government, and is also consequently capable of producing much less shots about the same charge, managing around 230, though it does help to make the digital camera body small. The camera’s tripod socket is made of metal and it is in line using the lens’ optical axis. This actually also signifies that changing batteries or cards isn’t feasible even though the J1 is installed on a tripod, since the hinges on the battery/card compartment door are way too close to the tripod mount.

So, how did we like utilizing the Nikon 1 J1? On one side, we liked it a lot. In good light, its auto-focus technique is indeed faster than virtually anything we’ve used up to now, the ability to track and lock give attention to a variety of truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding a great deal 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 does have it’s share of frustrating idiosyncrasies beginning from the user interface that pushes you to dive into your menu gain access to functions as basic as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons into a finished product, they are able to at least make the “F” button customisable via a firmware update. Also, you will find a passionate button for exposure compensation - a good thing - I did not are able to activate a live histogram, although it would have made exposure compensation additional useful and simple make use of. Again, this may likely to end up fixed in firmware.

We also missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, specifically in bright light or aided by 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’s defense against unwanted debris, as opposed to the more proactive sensor cleaning unit which the V1 offers, plus the smaller battery signifies that you should buy an additional that you go through the day’s heavy shooting. Lacking an accessory port means that almost no Nikon 1 accessories are appropriate for the J1, for example the external flash and GPS unit.

Something more important we failed to like was that the camera would always show the photo just taken for a couple of seconds onscreen, and that we wouldn’t 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 the camera is mostly fast and responsive, your camera takes excessively long to get up from sleep mode if this has been idle for a short time, causing a number of missed shots.

That being said, the Nikon 1 J1 is often a small , compact, high-performance system camera they like its government can use a number of tweaks to its user interface to better suit the requirements of serious amateurs. The intended target audience of casual users will cherish it due to the sheer speed, built-in flash, lightweight along with the fun features it provides. Let’s now see how the Nikon 1 J1 fared from the image quality department.