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The Nikon 1 J1 can be a stylish compact system camera with a 10-megapixel “CX” format sensor as well as the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Boasting continuous shooting speeds all the way to 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 provides more conventional shooting modes like Programmed Auto, Aperture and Shutter Priority, along with Metered Manual. Also aboard can be a built-in pop-up flash which has a guide number of 5, a 3 inch rear display as well as an electronic shutter. Costing $649.95 / 549.99 which has 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 mainly created from aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts and is therefore heavier than you would think depending on its size alone, weighing in at 234g for your body only. What’s more, it feels better made as opposed to official product shots would have you believe. With an essentially grip-less design, the Nikon J1 is very much a two-handed affair that needs you to 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 an excellent as it can make you look closely at holding you properly, which inturn goes quite a distance 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 a scaled-down version on the ancient F mount, it’s actually a completely new design that delivers 100% electronic communication between the attached lens and the camera body, courtesy of 12 contacts. Just like about the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, you will find there’s white dot for simple lens alignment, though it has moved on the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) to the top from the mount. The lenses themselves feature a short silver ridge within the lens barrel, which should be in alignment with said dot to ensure that you to definitely have the ability to attach the lens for the camera. Although this might need a little bit of getting used to, this process makes changing lenses quicker and much easier.

With no lens attached, you can see the sensor sitting directly behind the plane with the bayonet mount. Just like the mount itself, the sensor is brand-new. Measuring 13.2×8.8mm this “CX” format imaging chip has quantity surface area of the most popular imagers employed in compact and bridge cameras much like the Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, but only most of the vicinity of an standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip includes a 1.36x longer diagonal compared to the Nikon CX imager. Considering that Four Thirds incorporates a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” computes to about 2.72, and thus a 10mm lens has approximately the same angle of view being a 27.2mm lens with 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 when it comes to its angle-of-view range.

The rest of the Nikon J1’s faceplate is almost empty, featuring merely the lens release, a receiver for the optional ML-L3 infrared remote device, two narrow slits for your microphone either sides in the lens, along with an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There isn’t any grip at all around the front in the Nikon 1 J1.

There are two strategies to powering around the Nikon 1 J1. Either utilize on/off button sitting near the shutter release or, should you have a collapsible-barrel contact attached, you can easily 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. It becomes an ingenious solution since you need to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes approximately an extra - not write home about yet still decent and entirely adequate.

You are able to frame your shots with all the rear screen - there’s no electronic viewfinder as within the V1 model, a vital difference between the 2 main. The LCD screen is 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 with all the J1 alongside the V1, in bright sunlit conditions or when using the 30-110mm telezoom lens as holding your camera up to eye-level helped to stabilise the lens and steer clear of trembling camera.

The control layout is very peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 carries a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks many of the shooting modes which might be usually found on similar dials - that include P, A, S and M - even though it has enough room to fit them. These modes can be purchased for the J1 however, you need to dive in the rather long-winded but not entirely logical menu to seek out them. The J1’s mode dial only has four settings, Photo, Video, Motion Snapshot and Smart Photo Selector. The four-way controller boasts four functions mapped onto its Up, Right, Down and Left buttons; including AE/AF-Lock, exposure compensation, flash mode and self-timer, respectively. Evidently this isn’t a bad number of functions, the belief that there’s no ISO button will doubtlessly cause a lot of photographers interested in purchasing the Nikon J1 to become unhappy.

There is a button about the rear labelled “F” but alas, this is simply not a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it lets you quickly select from the continuous shooting modes, whilst in Video mode it lets you toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There are two more significant controls within the back with the camera, including a scroll wheel about the four-way pad plus a rocker switch marked using a loupe icon. The scroll wheel can be used to create the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (when you have found them from the menu, that’s), as you move the rocker switch controls the aperture. The key reason why it’s got a loupe icon next to it can be that control is employed to zoom in while on an image to evaluate for critical concentrate Playback mode. Last of all, there are four small buttons about the navigation pad, flush resistant to the rear panel with the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.

Precisely what are shooting modes around the mode dial exactly about? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked with a green camera icon, is where you would want to be most of the time. While using mode dial set to the present position, you may pick your required exposure mode from the menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a brilliant auto mode in which the camera analyses the scene in front of its lens and picks what it thinks will be the right mode for that particular scene. You may also find out on the conventional PASM modes, which provide you with full menu access and also the capacity to manually set the aperture, shutter speed, or both (Program AE Shift is available in P mode). ISO and white balance can even be manually selected, only on the menu, as already mentioned.

Certainly there’s AWB and auto ISO as well, using the latter to arrive three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) enabling you to specify how high you would like you to search if the light gets low. You may also select three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, where the camera takes power over what it focusses on (this is not an incredible mode to own as the default since the camera obviously can’t read the mind and could concentrate on something different than your actual subject); Single Point, in places you can decide considered one of 135 AF points beginning with hitting OK and then moving the active AF point about the frame while using the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, that you pick your subject, press OK and enable the camera to track that subject as it moves around, as long as doesn’t necessarily leave the frame obviously.

The Nikon 1 J1 comes with an intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that mixes contrast- and phase-difference detection in a similar way because the Fujifilm F300EXR did. This permits the Nikon 1 J1 to target extremely quickly in good light, even on the moving subject. The corporation claims the Nikon 1 system cameras are definitely the fastest-focusing machines on this planet, 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 than on most cameras, isn’t nearly you’d like additional method. It really is the camera that decides which AF strategy to use - the user doesn’t have any influence on this.

In most cases, the J1 usually only turn to 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 isn’t going to disappoint here. Manual focusing can be possible, however the Nikon 1 lenses don’t have focus rings. If you need to focus manually, you initially must hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK and then use the scroll wheel to focus. To be of assistance using this type of, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central the main image and displays a rudimentary focus scale along the right side from the frame - but those include the only focusing helps you get. There is absolutely no peaking function available as on some rival models.

The J1 comes with an electronic shutter (the V1 also offers a mechanical shutter). It’s completely silent (the main objective confirmation beep may be disabled from your menu) and allows the use of shutter speeds as soon as 1/16,000th of a second and, using the Electronic Hi setting selected, permits you to shoot full-resolution stills at 60 frames per second. Note however that although this can be a major achievement, it’s on a a buffer that can only hold 12 raw files. Additionally, the use of this mode precludes AF tracking - you must lower the frame rate to 10fps if you need that -, and also the viewfinder goes blank even though the pictures are now being taken. About the only application we are able to consider 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 could be consumed in less than 0.1 second, rendering small movements that may otherwise pose alignment problems - like leaves being blown inside the wind - a non-issue. Alas, the Nikon J1 doesn’t offer this sort of feature - the truth is this doesn’t offer autoexposure bracketing in any way.

Trying out the playback quality mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. Most notably, you could be set to shoot Full HD footage, and you also even are able to choose from 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, determined by whether you would like to work with progressive or interlaced video. If you do not need Full HD, additionally, there are 720p @ 60fps, which can be really smooth whilst still being counts as hi-def. Secondly, you will get full manual control of exposure in video mode. It is really an option; it’s not necessary to shoot in M mode but you can in the event that’s what you require. Thirdly, you will get fast, continuous AF in video mode, and it works well, particularly in good light. Movies are compressed using the H.264 codec and stored as MOV files. There are separate shutter release buttons for stills and video, and because of this - and also the massive processing power from the Nikon J1 - you are able to take multiple full-resolution stills even while recording HD video. This works the opposite too - you can 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 this instance the camera will forever record film at 720p/60fps.

And also being able to shooting regular movies in HD quality, the Nikon 1 J1 also can shoot video at 400fps for slow-motion playback. The resolution is less 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 replayed at 30fps, which can be over 13x slower than the capture speed of 400fps, helping you to get creative and show the world an array of interesting phenomena which happen too soon to watch in real time. The Nikon J1 goes further by offering a 1200fps video mode, but the resolution and overall quality is just too big poor for the to be genuinely useful.

The third icon around the mode dial symbolizes Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows you to capture at the least 20 photos at the single press with the shutter release, including some which were taken before fully depressing the button. The camera analyses the person pictures within the series and discards 15 of which, keeping the five that it thinks are best with regard to sharpness and composition. This feature could be genuinely useful when photographing fast action and fleeting moments.

Finally, there exists a so-called Motion Snapshot mode when the camera records a concise high-definition movie - whose buffering starts at a half-press from the shutter release, so again includes events which had happened prior to the button was fully depressed - and also takes a still photograph. The film as well as the still image are stored in separate files though the camera can combine them right into a single slow-motion clip with background music. It’s fun but we not able to really envision people making use of this shooting mode on a regular basis. (If you see the video using a computer, it is going to play back at normal speed, without sound, and this mode is actually only interesting in case you see the clip in-camera or hook you up to an HDTV with an HDMI cable.)

The Nikon J1 stores pics and vids on SD/SDHC/SDXC memory cards, and props up fastest UHS-I speed class. You is run on a reduced EN-EL20 battery to its V1 larger, and it is consequently capable of producing considerably less shots for a passing fancy charge, managing around 230, though it helps for making the camera body more compact. The camera’s tripod socket is made of metal and it is in line with the lens’ optical axis. This too signifies that changing batteries or cards isn’t feasible while the J1 is attached to a tripod, as being the hinges on the battery/card compartment door are too towards the tripod mount.

So, how did we love to while using Nikon 1 J1? On one hand, we liked it a good deal. In good light, its auto-focus technique is indeed faster than just about anything we’ve used up to now, to be able to track and lock target numerous truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding a great deal of sharp images in situations where our keeper rates haven’t ever been very good. Additionally, its high-speed continuous shooting modes have allowed us to capture interesting moments that we’d have surely missed whenever 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.

On the other hand, the Nikon J1 has its own share of frustrating idiosyncrasies applying anyone interface that forces you to dive in the menu to reach functions as basic as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons to some finished product, they could a minimum of make the “F” button customisable by using a firmware update. Also, you will find a separate button for exposure compensation - the industry positive thing - I didnrrrt be capable of activate an active histogram, even though it would’ve made exposure compensation much more useful and easy to work with. Again, this could oftimes be fixed in firmware.

We also missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, specifically in bright light or with the telephoto lens which does not lend itself well to being held out at arms length. The J1 merely has a glass dust shield since it is defense against unwanted debris, rather than the more proactive sensor cleaning unit that the V1 offers, plus the smaller battery shows that you’ll want to buy an added one to arrive at the day’s heavy shooting. Having less an accessory port means that almost none of the Nikon 1 accessories are that will work with the J1, such as external flash and GPS unit.

Another thing we did not like was that the camera would always show the picture just taken for a few seconds onscreen, and now we would not be capable of turn this instant postview function completely off (although you can at least cancel it using a half-press in the shutter release). Finally, while the camera is often fast and responsive, the camera takes excessively long to arise from sleep mode gets hotter is idle for a short time, resulting in many missed shots.

That being said, the Nikon 1 J1 is a smaller than average and compact, high-performance system camera that they like its big brother could use a number of tweaks to its gui to increase suit the requirements serious amateurs. The intended audience of casual users should it because of its sheer speed, built-in flash, lightweight plus the fun features there is. We will now observe the Nikon 1 J1 fared inside the image quality department.