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The Nikon 1 J1 is really a stylish compact system camera using a 10-megapixel “CX” format sensor and also the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Boasting continuous shooting speeds up to 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 offers more conventional shooting modes like Programmed Auto, Aperture and Shutter Priority, along with Metered Manual. Also fully briefed is often a built-in pop-up flash using a guide amount of 5, a 3 inch rear display as well as an electronic shutter. Charging $649.95 / 549.99 having a 10-30mm the len’s, $699.95 / 599.99 with a 10mm pancake lens, or $799.95 / 699.99 in a very double-lens kit together with the 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 made from aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts and is therefore heavier than you would think according to its size alone, coming in at 234g for your body only. Additionally, it feels higher quality than the official product shots would have you believe. By having an essentially grip-less design, the Nikon J1 is very much a two-handed affair that will need you to definitely support the camera’s weight within the left hand, clutching the lens, and utilize your right hand for balance and operating the controls. This is actually the best thing mainly because it makes you take note of holding your camera properly, which in turn goes quite a distance 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 to be a scaled-down version with the good old F mount, it is a brand spanking new design providing you with 100% electronic communication relating to the attached lens and also the camera body, due to twelve contacts. The same as around the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, we have a white dot for quick lens alignment, though it has moved in the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) to # 1 from the mount. The lenses themselves use a short silver ridge on the lens barrel, which ought to be in alignment with said dot to ensure one to be able to attach the lens on the camera. Of course this might require a bit of becoming accustomed to, it actually makes changing lenses quicker and much easier.

Without having lens attached, you will see the sensor sitting directly behind the plane on the bayonet mount. Such as the mount itself, the sensor is brand new. Measuring 13.2×8.8mm this “CX” format imaging chip has double area of the most popular imagers found in compact and bridge cameras such as the Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, but only about 50 % the area of an standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip carries a 1.36x longer diagonal compared to the Nikon CX imager. Since Four Thirds features a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” works out to around 2.72, which means that a 10mm lens has approximately exactly the same angle of view as a 27.2mm lens on an FX or 35mm film camera. The Nikon 1 Nikkor 10-30mm standard zoom is thus the same as a 27.2-81.6mm (or, practically speaking, 28-80mm) FX lens regarding its angle-of-view range.

Other Nikon J1’s faceplate is nearly empty, featuring merely the lens release, a receiver for your optional ML-L3 infrared handheld remote control, two narrow slits with the microphone both sides with the lens, along with an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There is absolutely no grip in any way around the front of the Nikon 1 J1.

There’s 2 ways of powering within the Nikon 1 V1. You may either makes use of the on/off button sitting near the shutter release or, should you have a collapsible-barrel contact lens attached, you can just press the unlocking button on the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an act that causes your camera to switch on automatically. This is an ingenious solution as you have to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes just over a second - not even attempt to write home about but still decent and entirely adequate.

You may frame your shots utilizing the rear screen - there is not any electronic viewfinder as about the V1 model, an important difference between the 2. 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 with all the J1 alongside the V1, in both bright sunlit conditions or while using the 30-110mm telezoom lens as holding your camera as much as eye-level helped to stabilise the lens and avoid camera shake.

The control layout is pretty peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 carries a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks many of the shooting modes which are usually situated on similar dials - especially P, A, S and M - although it has enough room to match them. These modes can be obtained for the J1 and you should dive to the rather long-winded and not entirely logical menu to locate them. The J1’s mode dial only has 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. Of course this isn’t a bad number of functions, the fact that there isn’t any ISO button will doubtlessly spark a lots of photographers considering buying the Nikon J1 to be unhappy.

There is a button on the rear labelled “F” but alas, this is not a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it lets you quickly choose between the continuous shooting modes, when it is in Video mode it allows you to toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There’s two more significant controls on the back from the camera, including a scroll wheel throughout the four-way pad and a rocker switch marked having a loupe icon. The scroll wheel is needed to set the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (when you’ve found them inside menu, that’s), as the rocker switch controls the aperture. The reason it’s a loupe icon close to it’s that control is needed to focus on an image to test for critical concentrate Playback mode. Last of all, you will find four small buttons round the navigation pad, flush resistant to the rear panel from the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.

What exactly are the types shooting modes for the mode dial information on? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked that has a green camera icon, is the place you would want to be quite often. With all the mode dial set to this particular position, you’ll be able to pick your required exposure mode from the menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a great auto mode the location where the camera analyses the scene when in front of its lens and picks exactly what it thinks would be the right way of that one scene. It’s also possible to find out of the conventional PASM modes, which provide you with full menu access along with the chance 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, but only through the menu, as stated previously.

Of course there’s AWB and auto ISO too, using the latter being released three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) allowing you to specify how high you need your camera to look when the light gets low. You can also pick from three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, when the camera takes control over exactly what it focusses on (this isn’t an excellent mode to have as your default as being the camera obviously can’t read the mind and might concentrate on something more important than your actual subject); Single Point, the place you can pick one of 135 AF points first by hitting OK and then moving the active AF point about the frame while using the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, in which you pick your subject, press OK and permit the camera to monitor that subject the way it moves around, so long as it doesn’t leave the frame needless to say.

The Nikon 1 J1 comes with an intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that mixes contrast- and phase-difference detection in a similar fashion because Fujifilm F300EXR did. This enables the Nikon 1 J1 to target extremely quickly in good light, even using a moving subject. This company claims the Nikon 1 system cameras would be the fastest-focusing machines on the planet, and also this matches our experience - providing there’s enough light. When light levels drop, the camera switches to contrast-detect AF which, though faster than on most cameras, isn’t as fast as additional method. It is usually your camera that decides which AF approach to use - the person does not have any impact on this.

Most of the time, the J1 usually only turn to contrast detection when light levels are low. In good light, i was capable of taking sharp photos of fast-moving subjects. The Nikon J1 certainly does not disappoint here. Manual focusing is additionally possible, although the Nikon 1 lenses do not have focus rings. If you need to focus manually, first you need to hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK and after that make use of the scroll wheel to adjust focus. To work with you using this, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central the main image and displays a rudimentary focus scale on the right side from the frame - but those would be the only focusing helps you get. There is not any peaking function available as on some rival models.

The J1 comes with an electronic shutter (the V1 also offers an analog shutter). It’s completely silent (the target confirmation beep can be disabled on the menu) and allows the use of shutter speeds as fast as 1/16,000th of any second and, using the Electronic Hi setting selected, enables you to shoot full-resolution stills at 60 fps. Note however that while that is a major achievement, it’s on a a buffer that will only hold 12 raw files. Additionally, the utilization of this mode precludes AF tracking - you should lower the frame rate to 10fps if you’d like that -, and also the viewfinder goes blank as the pictures are now being taken. Single thing that it application we could consider where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really prove useful is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. At this rate, some 5 bracketed shots might be used below 0.1 second, rendering small movements that may otherwise pose alignment problems - like leaves being blown from the wind - a non-issue. Alas, the Nikon J1 will not offer such a feature - actually it does not offer autoexposure bracketing at all.

Trying out the recording mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. Most notably, the digital camera may be set to shoot Full HD footage, so you even are able to select from 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, depending on whether you prefer to work together with progressive or interlaced video. If you don’t need Full HD, there’s also 720p @ 60fps, which can be really smooth yet still counts as hi-d. Secondly, you receive full manual control of exposure in video mode. It is an option; you won’t need to shoot in M mode however, you can in the event that’s the thing you need. Thirdly, you get fast, continuous AF in video mode, and delay well, specifically in good light. Movies are compressed while using the H.264 codec and stored as MOV files. You will discover separate shutter release buttons for stills and video, and because of this - as well as the massive processing power of the Nikon J1 - you are able to take multiple full-resolution stills whilst recording HD video. This works vice versa too - you may capture a movie clip even if the mode dial is incorporated in the Still Image position, by just pressing the red movie shutter release. We’ve discovered that in cases like this the digital camera will usually record the playback quality at 720p/60fps.

And also competent 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 and also the aspect ratio is definitely an ultra-widescreen 2.67:1, though the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo and stuff like that. These videos are played back at 30fps, which can be over 13x slower as opposed to capture speed of 400fps, letting you get creative and prove to the world a range of interesting phenomena which happen too rapidly to see or watch instantly. The Nikon J1 goes a little more forward by offering a 1200fps video mode, though the resolution and overall quality is too poor to the to get genuinely useful.

Another icon on the mode dial stands for Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows the camera to capture at least 20 photos at the single press from the shutter release, including some that were taken before fully depressing the button. You analyses anyone pictures from the series and discards 15 of which, keeping merely the five which it thinks should be with regard to sharpness and composition. This feature is usually genuinely useful when photographing fast action and fleeting moments.

Finally, you will find there’s so-called Motion Snapshot mode the place that the camera records a quick high-definition movie - whose buffering starts with a half-press on the shutter release, so again includes events which in fact had happened prior to a button was fully depressed - plus has a still photograph. The film as well as the still image are held in separate files however the camera can combine them in to a single slow-motion clip with music. It’s fun but we’re not able to really envision people by using this shooting mode all the time. (In case you look at the video with a computer, it is going to play back at normal speed, without sound, this mode is absolutely only interesting in case you view 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 fastest UHS-I speed class. The digital camera runs on a compact EN-EL20 battery to the V1 government, and is particularly consequently able to produce much less shots using one charge, managing around 230, though it does help for making the camera body smaller. The camera’s tripod socket is made from metal and is also in line with the lens’ optical axis. This too signifies that changing batteries or cards isn’t feasible while the J1 is placed on a tripod, since the hinges with the battery/card compartment door are extremely near to the tripod mount.

So, how did we love to using the Nikon 1 J1? Similarly, we liked it lots. In good light, its auto-focus system is indeed faster than virtually anything we’ve used so far, having the ability to track and lock target a range of truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding many sharp images in situations where our keeper rates have not been very high. Additionally, its high-speed continuous shooting modes have allowed us to capture interesting moments that we’d have surely missed when we had used a slower camera. The built-in pop-up flash proved more useful the reason is modest guide number might suggest, together with the clever design minimising red-eye.

However, the Nikon J1 have their own share of frustrating idiosyncrasies starting with an individual interface that forces you to dive into your menu to get into functions as basic as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons into a finished product, they might a minimum of increase the risk for “F” button customisable by using a firmware update. Also, you will find a separate button for exposure compensation - that is a great thing - Some find a way to activate a live histogram, even though it can have made exposure compensation a lot more useful and to work with. Again, this can oftimes be fixed in firmware.

We also missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, especially in bright light or aided by the telephoto lens which does not lend itself well to being held out at arms length. The J1 merely has a glass dust shield as it’s defense against unwanted debris, rather than the more proactive sensor cleaning unit how the V1 offers, and also the smaller battery signifies that you should buy another anyone to get through a day’s heavy shooting. Lacking an accessory port shows that almost no Nikon 1 accessories are works with the J1, such as the external flash and GPS unit.

Another thing we wouldn’t like was that the camera would always show the image just taken for a couple seconds onscreen, therefore we did not be capable of turn this instant postview function completely off (although you can at least cancel it with a half-press of the shutter release). Finally, whilst the camera is normally fast and responsive, the digital camera takes excessively long to awaken from sleep mode if it has been idle for a while, causing several missed shots.

In fact, the Nikon 1 J1 is usually a small, and compact, high-performance system camera that they like its government could use some tweaks to its user interface to raised suit the needs of serious amateurs. The intended audience of casual users will cherish it for its sheer speed, built-in flash, compact size and also the fun features it gives you. Let us now observe how the Nikon 1 J1 fared within the image quality department.