Overview of Nikon 1 J1: Completely new Nikon Mirroless Dslrs
The Nikon 1 J1 can be a stylish compact system camera having a 10-megapixel “CX” format sensor and also the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Boasting continuous shooting speeds as much as 60 fps 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 also provides more conventional shooting modes like Programmed Auto, Aperture and Shutter Priority, and also Metered Manual. Also on board is a built-in pop-up flash that has a guide number of 5, a 3 inch rear display with an electronic shutter. Priced at $649.95 / 549.99 having a 10-30mm standard zoom lens, $699.95 / 599.99 using 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 go on sale later this month.
The Nikon 1 J1 is usually made out of aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts and is also therefore heavier than what you know already dependant on its size alone, weighing 234g for that body only. It also feels better quality as opposed to official product shots would have you believe. By having an essentially grip-less design, the Nikon J1 is extremely much a two-handed affair that requires that you secure the camera’s weight within the left-hand, clutching the lens, and rehearse your right hand for balance and operating the controls. This is actually a very important thing the way it forces you to focus on holding the digital camera properly, which goes a considerable ways towards avoiding shake-induced blur with your photos.
The camera’s clean, minimalist front plate is covered with the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. As an alternative to being a scaled-down version from the traditional F mount, it’s a brand-new design that delivers 100% electronic communication involving the attached lens along with the camera body, from twelve contacts. Just like for the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, you will find there’s white dot for straightforward lens alignment, though it has moved from the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) to the top level on the mount. The lenses themselves use a short silver ridge for the lens barrel, which has to be in alignment with said dot to ensure that that you have the ability to attach the lens towards the camera. While this may require a little adjusting to, it genuinely makes changing lenses quicker and much easier.
Without lens attached, you can see the sensor sitting directly behind the plane on the bayonet mount. Much like the mount itself, the sensor is fresh. Measuring 13.2×8.8mm this “CX” format imaging chip has double the amount expanse of the biggest imagers employed in compact and bridge cameras much like the Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, but only about 50 % of the vicinity of your standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip has a 1.36x longer diagonal versus the Nikon CX imager. Considering the fact that Four Thirds features a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” calculates to around 2.72, and therefore a 10mm lens has approximately precisely the same angle of view to be a 27.2mm lens on an FX or 35mm film camera. The Nikon 1 Nikkor 10-30mm standard zoom is thus equivalent to a 27.2-81.6mm (or, practically speaking, 28-80mm) FX lens regarding its angle-of-view range.
Other Nikon J1’s faceplate is actually empty, featuring the lens release, a receiver for your optional ML-L3 infrared handheld remote control, two narrow slits for your microphone spare on both on the lens, along with an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There isn’t any grip in any respect about the front of the Nikon 1 J1.
The two main means of powering within the Nikon1 J1. You can makes use of the on/off button sitting near the shutter release or, should you have a collapsible-barrel contact attached, you can simply press the unlocking button about the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an action that triggers the digital camera to interchange on automatically. It becomes an ingenious solution as you have to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes about a 2nd - absolutely nothing to write home about but still decent and entirely adequate.
You’ll be able to frame your shots while using rear screen - there is not any electronic viewfinder as around the V1 model, a key difference between the two. The LCD screen is 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 the J1 alongside the V1, in both bright sunlit conditions or with all the 30-110mm telezoom lens as holding the digital camera up to eye-level helped to stabilise the lens and steer clear of camera shake.
The control layout is pretty peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 includes a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks a lot of the shooting modes which can be usually seen on similar dials - especially P, A, S and M - although it has enough room to support them. These modes can be obtained about the J1 but you ought to dive into the rather long-winded and not 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 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 is not a bad range of functions, the reality that there is absolutely no ISO button will doubtlessly cause a large amount of photographers interested in acquiring the Nikon J1 for being unhappy.
There’s a button on the rear labelled “F” but alas, it’s not a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it lets you quickly make a choice from the continuous shooting modes, when it is in Video mode it allows you to toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There are two more valuable controls about the back with the camera, together with a scroll wheel round the four-way pad and a rocker switch marked with a loupe icon. The scroll wheel is employed to create the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (once you have found them inside menu, that is certainly), as the rocker switch controls the aperture. Exactly why it provides a loupe icon alongside it is until this control can be used to focus while on an image to confirm for critical concentrate Playback mode. As a final point, you’ll find four small buttons about the navigation pad, flush resistant to the rear panel in the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.
What exactly are shooting modes within the mode dial exactly about? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked that has a green camera icon, is to try and will want to be quite often. Using 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 great automatic mode when the camera analyses the scene facing its lens and picks what it really thinks will be the right mode for any particular one scene. You can even choose one with the conventional PASM modes, which present you with full menu access plus the capacity to manually set the aperture, shutter speed, or both (Program AE Shift can be found in P mode). ISO and white balance can be manually selected, only from your menu, as mentioned above.
Naturally there’s AWB and auto ISO too, using the latter being released in three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) enabling you to specify how high you need the digital camera to travel in the event the light gets low. It’s also possible to choose between three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, the location where the camera takes power over exactly what focusses on (this is not a terrific mode to possess as your default as being the camera obviously can’t read your mind and may target something different than your actual subject); Single Point, in which you can pick certainly one of 135 AF points starting with hitting OK and moving the active AF point round the frame while using four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, in which you pick your subject, press OK and enable your camera to track that subject since it moves around, given that it doesn’t leave the frame certainly.
The Nikon 1 J1 posseses an intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that combines contrast- and phase-difference detection in a similar way as the Fujifilm F300EXR did. This will give the Nikon 1 J1 to concentrate extremely quickly in good light, even on a moving subject. This company claims the Nikon 1 system cameras include the fastest-focusing machines on the planet, this also matches our experience - given that there’s enough light. When light levels drop, the digital camera switches to contrast-detect AF which, though faster than you are on most cameras, isn’t as quickly as one other method. It really is you that decides which AF method to use - anyone does not have any influence on this.
Usually, the J1 usually only make use of contrast detection when light levels are low. In good light, we had arrived capable of taking sharp photos of fast-moving subjects. The Nikon J1 certainly will not disappoint here. Manual focusing is also possible, although Nikon 1 lenses do not have focus rings. If you would like focus manually, you first of all ought to hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK and makes use of the scroll wheel to alter focus. To help you with this particular, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central section of the image and displays a rudimentary focus scale along the right side on the frame - but those would be the only focusing aids you get. There is no peaking function available as on some rival models.
The J1 has a electronic shutter (the V1 also offers an analog shutter). It is absolutely silent (the target confirmation beep is usually disabled from your menu) and allows the use of shutter speeds as fast as 1/16,000th of a second and, while using Electronic Hi setting selected, lets you shoot full-resolution stills at 60 fps. Note however that although this can be a major achievement, it’s limited by a buffer which could only hold 12 raw files. Additionally, using this mode precludes AF tracking - you need to lower the frame rate to 10fps if you need that -, and the viewfinder goes blank while the pictures are increasingly being taken. The linksys e2000 application we can imagine where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really come in handy is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. With this rate, several 5 bracketed shots may very well be used a lot less than 0.1 second, rendering small movements that can otherwise pose alignment problems - like leaves being blown in the wind - a non-issue. Alas, the Nikon J1 does not offer this kind of feature - actually it won’t offer autoexposure bracketing at all.
Moving on to the recording mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. To start with, the camera could be set to shoot Full HD footage, and also you even arrive at pick from 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, dependant upon whether you prefer to use progressive or interlaced video. Unless you need Full HD, additionally, there is 720p @ 60fps, that’s really smooth nevertheless counts as high definition. Secondly, you obtain full manual treating exposure in video mode. It is deemed an option; you won’t have to shoot in M mode but you can if that is the thing you need. Thirdly, you receive fast, continuous AF in video mode, and it works well, particularly in good light. Movies are compressed while using the H.264 codec and stored as MOV files. You’ll find separate shutter release buttons for stills and video, and due to this - as well as the massive processing power in the Nikon J1 - you’ll be able to take multiple full-resolution stills whilst recording HD video. This works in reversed order too - you can capture a motion picture clip even though the mode dial is in the Still Image position, merely by pressing the red movie shutter release. We’ve found that in cases like this your camera will forever record the video at 720p/60fps.
And also being efficient at shooting regular movies in HD quality, the Nikon 1 J1 may also shoot video at 400fps for slow-motion playback. The resolution is lower along with the aspect ratio is definitely an ultra-widescreen 2.67:1, however the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo and the like. These videos are played back at 30fps, which is a lot more than 13x slower than the capture speed of 400fps, enabling you to get creative and prove to the world an array of interesting phenomena that happen too quickly to observe instantly. The Nikon J1 goes even further by providing a 1200fps video mode, however the resolution and overall quality is just too poor for your being genuinely useful.
The 3rd icon on the mode dial stands for Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows the camera to capture no less than 20 photos in a single press in the shutter release, including some which are taken before fully depressing the button. The digital camera analyses the person pictures in the series and discards 15 of those, keeping merely the five that it thinks would be better regarding sharpness and composition. This feature can be genuinely useful when photographing fast action and fleeting moments.
Finally, you will find there’s so-called Motion Snapshot mode the location where the camera records a short high-definition movie - whose buffering starts at a half-press on the shutter release, so again includes events which had happened before the button was fully depressed - and in addition has a still photograph. The film and also the still image are held in separate files even so the camera can combine them in a single slow-motion clip with music. It’s fun but we can not really envision people applying this shooting mode regularly. (If you comprehend the video with a computer, it will play back at normal speed, without sound, so this mode is actually only interesting should you comprehend the clip in-camera or hook your camera approximately an HDTV through an HDMI cable.)
The Nikon J1 stores pics and vids on SD/SDHC/SDXC memory cards, and sports ths fastest UHS-I speed class. The digital camera operates on an inferior EN-EL20 battery to the V1 big brother, and is particularly consequently able to produce considerably less shots on one charge, managing around 230, eventhough it helps to make the digital camera body more compact. The camera’s tripod socket is manufactured out of metal which is positioned in line with all the lens’ optical axis. This ensures that changing batteries or cards is not possible whilst the J1 is attached to a tripod, because the hinges from the battery/card compartment door are way too near to the tripod mount.
So, how did we like with all the Nikon 1 J1? On one hand, we liked it lots. In good light, its auto-focus product is indeed faster than virtually anything we’ve used up to now, having the capacity to track and lock target numerous truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding plenty of sharp images in situations where our keeper rates never been quite 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 its modest guide number might suggest, using the clever design minimising red-eye.
However, the Nikon J1 have their share of frustrating idiosyncrasies you start with the user interface that can make you dive to the menu gain access to functions as easy as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons to your finished product, they could at the very least increase the risk for “F” button customisable by using a firmware update. Also, while there is a dedicated button for exposure compensation - the great thing - I didnrrrt find a way to activate a live histogram, eventhough it would have made exposure compensation much more useful and easy to use. Again, this may oftimes be fixed in firmware.
We missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, specifically in bright light or with the telephoto lens which doesn’t lend itself well to being held out at arms length. The J1 just has a glass dust shield as it’s defense against unwanted debris, rather than the more proactive sensor cleaning unit that this V1 offers, and the smaller battery ensures that you’ll want to buy a supplementary someone to get to the day’s heavy shooting. Deficiency of an accessory port shows that almost none of the Nikon 1 accessories are compatible with the J1, like the external flash and GPS unit.
Something else we did not like could be that the camera would always show the picture just taken for some seconds onscreen, so we did not are able to turn this instant postview function completely off (while you can at least cancel it by using a half-press of the shutter release). Finally, while the camera is normally fast and responsive, you takes far too long to get up from sleep mode if it has been idle for a short time, resulting in quite a few missed shots.
That being said, the Nikon 1 J1 can be a small and compact, high-performance system camera they like its government could use a number of tweaks to its user interface to better suit the requirements serious amateurs. The intended audience of casual users will enjoy it due to the sheer speed, built-in flash, lightweight and the fun features it provides. Allow us to now observe how the Nikon 1 J1 fared inside the image quality department.
Tags: j1, mirroless cameras, nikon, nikon 1, nikon 1 j1, nikon 1 v1, nikon cameras, nikon1, v1