Report on Nikon 1 J1: Innovative Nikon Mirroless Dslrs
The Nikon 1 J1 is really a stylish compact system camera having a 10-megapixel “CX” format sensor along with the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Boasting continuous shooting speeds up to 60 frames per second at full resolution, Full HD video capture, an ultra-fast hybrid auto-focus system, Smart Photo Selector along with a unique Motion Snapshot Mode, the portable Nikon J1 even offers more conventional shooting modes like Programmed Auto, Aperture and Shutter Priority, as well as Metered Manual. Also fully briefed can be a built-in pop-up flash with a guide number of 5, a 3 inch rear display as well as an electronic shutter. Pricing $649.95 / 549.99 that has a 10-30mm zoom lens, $699.95 / 599.99 that has a 10mm pancake lens, or $799.95 / 699.99 inside a double-lens kit 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 constructed from aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts and is therefore heavier than you would think according to its size alone, weighing in at 234g for the body only. In addition, it feels better made than the official product shots maybe have you believe. With the essentially grip-less design, the Nikon J1 is extremely much a two-handed affair that will require that you hold the camera’s weight from the left hand, clutching the lens, and make use of your right hand for balance and operating the controls. This is certainly the good thing since it forces you to be aware of holding you properly, which experts claim goes further towards avoiding shake-induced blur inside your photos.
The camera’s clean, minimalist front plate is dominated by the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Rather then as being a scaled-down version on the traditional F mount, it is just a new design that delivers 100% electronic communication involving the attached lens as well as the camera body, courtesy of a dozen contacts. The same as within the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, you will find there’s white dot for simple lens alignment, though it has moved from the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) up in the mount. The lenses themselves feature a short silver ridge for the lens barrel, which must be in alignment with said dot to ensure you to be able to attach the lens on the camera. While this might need a little bit of becoming familiar with, it actually makes changing lenses quicker and simpler.
With no lens attached, you will notice the sensor sitting directly behind the plane with the bayonet mount. Such as mount itself, the sensor is completely new. Measuring 13.2×8.8mm this “CX” format imaging chip has double surface area of the most popular imagers found in compact and bridge cameras much like the Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, but only about 50 % the region of your standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip features a 1.36x longer diagonal than the Nikon CX imager. Provided that Four Thirds carries a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” computes to about 2.72, meaning that a 10mm lens has approximately precisely the same angle of view to be a 27.2mm lens upon 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 with regard to its angle-of-view range.
All of those other Nikon J1’s faceplate is almost empty, featuring only the lens release, a receiver to the optional ML-L3 infrared handy remote control, two narrow slits for that microphone spare on both with the lens, as well as an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There is no grip by any means on the front from the Nikon 1 J1.
There are two strategies to powering around the Nikon 1 J1 and Nikon 1 V1. You may either utilize on/off button sitting next to the shutter release or, should you have a collapsible-barrel contact attached, you can simply press the unlocking button on the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an act that causes your camera to change on automatically. It is really an ingenious solution since you need to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes just over another - not even attempt to write home about but nonetheless decent and entirely adequate.
You’ll be able to frame your shots utilizing the rear screen - there’s no electronic viewfinder as around the V1 model, an integral 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 but only so-so visibility in strong daylight. We missed the EVF with the J1 alongside the V1, in both bright sunlit conditions or with all the 30-110mm telezoom lens as holding you as much as eye-level helped to stabilise the lens and avoid trembling camera.
The control layout is rather peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 features a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks the majority of the shooting modes which are usually entirely on similar dials - most notably P, A, S and M - although it has enough room to accommodate them. These modes are available around the J1 but you must dive in to the rather long-winded and never entirely logical menu to find them. The J1’s mode dial has only 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 choice of functions, the truth that there’s no ISO button will doubtlessly result in a lot of photographers thinking about getting the Nikon J1 to become unhappy.
There exists a button about the rear labelled “F” but alas, this is simply not a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it allows you to quickly select from the continuous shooting modes, whilst in Video mode it enables you to toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There’s 2 more important controls about the back from the camera, including a scroll wheel across the four-way pad and also a rocker switch marked that has a loupe icon. The scroll wheel is employed to set the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (after you have found them inside menu, that is), even though the rocker switch controls the aperture. Exactly why it provides a loupe icon beside it can be until this control can be used to zoom in upon an image to evaluate for critical focus in Playback mode. Finally, you can find four small buttons about the navigation pad, flush against the rear panel with the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.
So what are shooting modes within the mode dial information about? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked using a green camera icon, is to should be most likely. While using mode dial set to this particular position, you are able to pick your desired exposure mode in the menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a smart automatic mode where the camera analyses the scene when in front of its lens and picks what it thinks will be the right way of that one scene. You may also pick one on the conventional PASM modes, which give you full menu access and the capability to manually set the aperture, shutter speed, or both (Program AE Shift will come in P mode). ISO and white balance can even be manually selected, only on the menu, as already mentioned.
Obviously there’s AWB and auto ISO also, together with the latter being released in three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) letting you specify how high you would like your camera to look when the light gets low. You can even pick from three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, the location where the camera takes management of just what it focusses on (it’s not a terrific mode to get as the default as the camera obviously can’t read your brain and may even give attention to another thing than your actual subject); Single Point, in places you can pick among 135 AF points by first hitting OK and moving the active AF point about the frame utilizing the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, the place you pick your subject, press OK and invite the digital camera to track that subject since it moves around, as long as it won’t leave the frame naturally.
The Nikon 1 J1 has an intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that combines contrast- and phase-difference detection in a similar way as being the Fujifilm F300EXR did. This enables the Nikon 1 J1 to concentrate extremely quickly in good light, even on the moving subject. The organization claims the Nikon 1 system cameras will be the fastest-focusing machines on the planet, and this matches our experience - given 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 as fast as additional method. It certainly is the digital camera that decides which AF approach to use - an individual does not have any influence on this.
Generally speaking, the J1 in most cases only use 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 won’t disappoint here. Manual focusing is also possible, even though the Nikon 1 lenses would not have focus rings. If you would like focus manually, first you need to hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK and make use of the scroll wheel to modify focus. To be of assistance using this, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central part of the image and displays a rudimentary focus scale down the right side from the frame - but those will be the only focusing helps you get. There is not any peaking function available as on some rival models.
The J1 has an electronic shutter (the V1 boasts a mechanical shutter). It’s absolutely silent (the attention confirmation beep is usually disabled in the menu) and allows the utilization of shutter speeds as fast as 1/16,000th of an second and, together with the Electronic Hi setting selected, permits you to shoot full-resolution stills at 60 frames per second. Note however that while this is a major achievement, it’s on a a buffer that may only hold 12 raw files. Additionally, the utilization of this mode precludes AF tracking - you need to lower the frame rate to 10fps if you wish that -, plus the viewfinder goes blank whilst the pictures are taken. Single thing that it application we can easily consider where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really be useful is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. At this rate, a series of 5 bracketed shots could be drawn in a lot 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 does not offer this kind of feature - in fact it doesn’t offer autoexposure bracketing whatsoever.
Getting to the video mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. Above all, the digital camera may be set to shoot Full HD footage, and you also even are able to pick from 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, depending on whether you prefer to work together with progressive or interlaced video. If you do not need Full HD, additionally, there is 720p @ 60fps, that’s really smooth whilst still being counts as hi-def. Secondly, you get full manual treating exposure in video mode. It becomes 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 it works well, particularly good light. Movies are compressed while using the H.264 codec and stored as MOV files. There are separate shutter release buttons for stills and video, and because of this - plus the massive processing power on the Nikon J1 - you may take multiple full-resolution stills while recording HD video. This works the opposite way round too - it is possible to capture a show clip even if the mode dial is with the Still Image position, by just pressing the red movie shutter release. We’ve learned that in this instance the camera will forever record it at 720p/60fps.
As well as being effective at shooting regular movies in HD quality, the Nikon 1 J1 may also shoot video at 400fps for slow-motion playback. The resolution is leaner and the aspect ratio can be an ultra-widescreen 2.67:1, though the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo and the like. These videos are played back at 30fps, that’s in excess of 13x slower as opposed to capture speed of 400fps, enabling you to get creative and show the world numerous interesting phenomena that happen too quickly to watch in real time. The Nikon J1 goes even further by a 1200fps video mode, but the resolution and overall quality is just too poor for the to get genuinely useful.
The 3rd icon on the mode dial stands for Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows the camera to capture at least 20 photos in a single press in the shutter release, including some that have been taken before fully depressing the button. You analyses the person pictures within the series and discards 15 of them, keeping only the five that it thinks are best when it comes to sharpness and composition. This feature may be genuinely useful when photographing fast action and fleeting moments.
Finally, there is a so-called Motion Snapshot mode the location where the camera records a brief high-definition movie - whose buffering starts at a half-press in the shutter release, so again includes events that have happened ahead of the button was fully depressed - and as well needs a still photograph. The movie as well as the still image are residing in separate files though the camera can combine them in to a single slow-motion clip with background music. It’s fun but we’re not able to really envision people employing this shooting mode regularly. (In case you comprehend the video with a computer, it is going to play back at normal speed, without sound, and this mode is very only interesting in case you comprehend the clip in-camera or hook your camera around an HDTV by using 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 digital camera is run on an inferior EN-EL20 battery to the V1 big brother, and is consequently able to produce even less shots using one charge, managing around 230, while it does help to create the camera body more compact. The camera’s tripod socket is made of metal and it is in line using the lens’ optical axis. This too signifies that changing batteries or cards isn’t feasible as you move the J1 is attached to a tripod, as being the hinges with the battery/card compartment door are too nearby the tripod mount.
So, how did we like while using Nikon 1 J1? On one side, we liked it lots. In good light, its auto-focus technique is indeed faster than just about anything we’ve used so far, being able to track and lock consentrate on a variety of truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding many sharp images in situations where our keeper rates have not been extremely 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 that it is modest guide number might suggest, while using clever design minimising red-eye.
Conversely, the Nikon J1 have their own share of frustrating idiosyncrasies starting with anyone interface that can make you dive in the menu to access functions as basic as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons to your finished product, they could at the least result in the “F” button customisable via a firmware update. Also, while there is a passionate button for exposure compensation - the industry good thing - I didnrrrt be capable of activate an active histogram, even though it would have made exposure compensation a lot more useful and simple to work with. Again, this will probably be fixed in firmware.
We missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, particularly bright light or with the telephoto lens which doesn’t 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, as opposed to the more proactive sensor cleaning unit that the V1 offers, along with the smaller battery shows that you’ll want to buy an extra anyone to get through a day’s heavy shooting. Having less an accessory port means that almost no Nikon 1 accessories are works with the J1, such as the external flash and GPS unit.
Something else we wouldn’t like could be that the camera would always show the image just taken for a couple of seconds onscreen, and we would not are able to turn this instant postview function completely off (although you can at any rate cancel it by using a half-press of the shutter release). Finally, even though the camera is usually fast and responsive, you takes overly long to get up from sleep mode gets hotter has become idle for a while, causing quite a few missed shots.
With that said, the Nikon 1 J1 is really a small , compact, high-performance system camera they enjoy its our government are able to use a few tweaks to its graphical user interface to higher suit the requirements of serious amateurs. The intended target market of casual users will like it because of its sheer speed, built-in flash, compact size as well as the fun features there is. Let us now observe the Nikon 1 J1 fared from the image quality department.