Writeup on Nikon 1 J1: Brand-new Nikon Mirroless Dslrs
The Nikon 1 J1 can be 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 of up to 60 frames per second at full resolution, Full HD video capture, an ultra-fast hybrid auto-focus system, Smart Photo Selector and also a unique Motion Snapshot Mode, the portable Nikon J1 offers more conventional shooting modes like Programmed Auto, Aperture and Shutter Priority, in addition to Metered Manual. Also on board is a built-in pop-up flash which has a guide quantity of 5, a 3 inch rear display along with an electronic shutter. Coming in at $649.95 / 549.99 that has a 10-30mm zoom lens, $699.95 / 599.99 with a 10mm pancake lens, or $799.95 / 699.99 within a double-lens kit with all 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 usually created from aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts and it is therefore heavier than what you know already depending on its size alone, weighing in at 234g for that body only. What’s more, it feels better 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 require you to definitely support the camera’s weight within the left-hand, clutching the lens, and use your right hand for balance and operating the controls. A great an excellent as it pushes you to look closely at holding your camera properly, which often goes quite a distance towards avoiding shake-induced blur within your photos.
The camera’s clean, minimalist front plate is covered with the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Instead of being a scaled-down version from the out of date F mount, it’s actually a completely new design that can offer 100% electronic communication between attached lens along with the camera body, courtesy of twelve contacts. Similar to on the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, there exists a white dot for simple lens alignment, though it has moved in the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) to # 1 on the mount. The lenses themselves feature a short silver ridge around the lens barrel, which has to be in alignment with said dot to enable you to have the capacity to attach the lens for the camera. Of course this may need a bit of getting used to, it actually makes changing lenses quicker and much easier.
Without any lens attached, you can see the sensor sitting directly behind the plane on the bayonet mount. Much like the mount itself, the sensor is completely new. Measuring 13.2×8.8mm this “CX” format imaging chip has double the surface area of the largest imagers found in compact and bridge cameras like the Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, but only most the location of your standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip features a 1.36x longer diagonal versus the Nikon CX imager. Considering that Four Thirds incorporates a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” breaks down to to about 2.72, which means that a 10mm lens has approximately precisely the same angle of view being 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 in terms of its angle-of-view range.
All of those other Nikon J1’s faceplate is almost empty, featuring merely the lens release, a receiver for your optional ML-L3 infrared remote control, two narrow slits for the microphone both sides in the lens, plus an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There is not any grip in any way on the front from the Nikon 1 J1.
There are two options for powering for the Nikon 1 V1. You may either utilize on/off button sitting next to the shutter release or, should you have a collapsible-barrel the len’s attached, just press the unlocking button around the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an act that creates the digital camera to change on automatically. It is an ingenious solution since you need to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes approximately an extra - not write home about but nevertheless decent and entirely adequate.
You are able to frame your shots with all the rear screen - there’s no electronic viewfinder as for the V1 model, an important distinction between the 2 main. The LCD screen is usually 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 while using the J1 alongside the V1, in either bright sunlit conditions or when using the 30-110mm telezoom lens as holding the camera around eye-level helped to stabilise the lens avoiding camera shake.
The control layout is very peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 incorporates a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks a lot of the shooting modes which are usually seen on similar dials - especially P, A, S and M - though it has enough room to match them. These modes can be purchased about the J1 however, you should dive in to the rather long-winded and not entirely logical menu to seek out them. The J1’s mode dial merely 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. Even if this is not a bad collection of functions, the belief that there isn’t any ISO button will doubtlessly produce a great deal of photographers thinking about getting the Nikon J1 to get unhappy.
We have 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 helps you to toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. The two main more valuable controls within the back in the camera, including a scroll wheel about the four-way pad and a rocker switch marked with a loupe icon. The scroll wheel is utilized to set the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (once you’ve found them inside the menu, that may be), while the rocker switch controls the aperture. Precisely why it has a loupe icon near to it can be this control is needed to zoom in on an image to check on for critical concentrate Playback mode. Finally, you will find four small buttons across the navigation pad, flush contrary to the rear panel in the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.
So what on earth are those shooting modes for the mode dial exactly about? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked having a green camera icon, is to try and will need to be quite often. While using mode dial set for this position, you are able to pick your desired exposure mode on the menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a smart auto mode the location where the camera analyses the scene facing its lens and picks exactly what thinks will be the right way of any particular one scene. Also you can make a choice with the conventional PASM modes, which provide you with full menu access and the ability to manually set the aperture, shutter speed, or both (Program AE Shift can be found in P mode). ISO and white balance will also be manually selected, only through the menu, as mentioned above.
Needless to say there’s AWB and auto ISO as well, together with the latter arriving three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) letting you specify how high you need your camera to look when the light gets low. You can also choose from three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, in which the camera takes charge of just what it focusses on (this isn’t a great mode to obtain when your default as being the camera obviously can’t read your head and may even consentrate on something else entirely than your actual subject); Single Point, in which you can come up one among 135 AF points first by hitting OK and after that moving the active AF point across the frame using the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, the place you pick your subject, press OK and permit you in order to that subject mainly because it moves around, providing it won’t leave the frame needless to say.
The Nikon 1 J1 has a intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that combines contrast- and phase-difference detection similarly since the Fujifilm F300EXR did. This will give the Nikon 1 J1 to focus extremely quickly in good light, even with a moving subject. The organization claims the Nikon 1 system cameras include the fastest-focusing machines on this planet, and also this matches our experience - provided 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 nearly as quickly as the opposite method. It really is the digital camera that decides which AF method to use - the consumer does not have any impact on this.
Generally speaking, the J1 will usually only resort to contrast detection when light levels are low. In good light, we were capable of taking sharp photos of fast-moving subjects. The Nikon J1 certainly will not disappoint here. Manual focusing can be possible, although the Nikon 1 lenses do not possess focus rings. In order to focus manually, you first ought to hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK then make use of the scroll wheel to modify focus. To help you out on this, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central the main image and displays a rudimentary focus scale over the right side with the frame - but those would be the only focusing helps you get. There’s no peaking function available as on some rival models.
The J1 posseses an electronic shutter (the V1 boasts an analog shutter). It’s absolutely silent (the target confirmation beep is usually disabled through the menu) and allows using shutter speeds as quickly as 1/16,000th of your second and, with the Electronic Hi setting selected, permits you to shoot full-resolution stills at 60 frames per second. Note however that although it is a major achievement, it’s on a a buffer that can only hold 12 raw files. Additionally, using this mode precludes AF tracking - you should lower the frame rate to 10fps if you’d like that -, and also the viewfinder goes blank even though the pictures are being taken. 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. As of this rate, a number of 5 bracketed shots might be consumed a lot less than 0.1 second, rendering small movements which could otherwise pose alignment problems - like leaves being blown within the wind - a non-issue. Alas, the Nikon J1 will not offer a real feature - actually no offer autoexposure bracketing in any respect.
Moving on to the recording mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. First and foremost, your camera is usually set to shoot Full HD footage, and you even reach pick from 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, depending on whether you’d rather work together with progressive or interlaced video. Should you not need Full HD, there is also 720p @ 60fps, which can be really smooth yet still counts as hd. Secondly, you have full manual treatments for exposure in video mode. It becomes an option; you won’t have to shoot in M mode but you can if that is the thing you need. Thirdly, you have fast, continuous AF in video mode, and delay pills work well, specially in good light. Movies are compressed while using 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 may take multiple full-resolution stills at the same time recording HD video. This works the opposite too - you can capture a show clip regardless of whether the mode dial is in the Still Image position, by simply pressing the red movie shutter release. We’ve learned that in cases like this the digital camera will invariably record the playback quality at 720p/60fps.
And also competent at shooting regular movies in HD quality, the Nikon 1 J1 may shoot video at 400fps for slow-motion playback. The resolution is gloomier as well as the aspect ratio is surely an ultra-widescreen 2.67:1, however the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo etc. These videos are played back at 30fps, that is greater than 13x slower as opposed to capture speed of 400fps, enabling you to get creative and prove to the world a multitude of interesting phenomena that happen prematurely to look at instantly. The Nikon J1 goes even further by a 1200fps video mode, however the resolution and overall quality is simply too poor with the for being genuinely useful.
The third icon for the mode dial represents Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows the digital camera to capture at least 20 photos in a single press in the shutter release, including some that were taken before fully depressing the button. The camera analyses the individual pictures from the series and discards 15 of which, keeping just the five who’s thinks would be best with regards to sharpness and composition. This feature can be genuinely useful when photographing fast action and fleeting moments.
Finally, we have a so-called Motion Snapshot mode the location where the camera records a concise high-definition movie - whose buffering starts in a half-press of the shutter release, so again includes events which had happened ahead of the button was fully depressed - as well as takes a still photograph. The film along with the still image are residing in separate files but the camera can combine them to a single slow-motion clip with music. It’s fun but we not able to really envision people employing this shooting mode often. (When you observe the video using a computer, it’ll play back at normal speed, without sound, which means you mode is really only interesting should you see the clip in-camera or hook the camera around an HDTV via an HDMI cable.)
The Nikon J1 stores pics and vids on SD/SDHC/SDXC memory cards, and props up fastest UHS-I speed class. Your camera runs using a reduced EN-EL20 battery to its V1 government, which is consequently able to produce even less shots using one charge, managing around 230, although it helps to generate the camera body more compact. The camera’s tripod socket is made of metal and is particularly positioned in line using the lens’ optical axis. This signifies that changing batteries or cards is not possible whilst the J1 is mounted on a tripod, as being the hinges on the battery/card compartment door are extremely nearby the tripod mount.
So, how did we love to utilizing the Nikon 1 J1? On one side, we liked it lots. In good light, its auto-focus method is indeed faster than basically anything we’ve used until now, being able to track and lock consentrate on an array of truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding plenty of sharp images in situations where our keeper rates haven’t 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 what has modest guide number might suggest, together with the clever design minimising red-eye.
In contrast, the Nikon J1 does have it’s share of frustrating idiosyncrasies beginning with the person interface that pushes you to dive to the menu to access functions as basic as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons into a finished product, they could at the very least have the “F” button customisable by using a firmware update. Also, you will find an avid button for exposure compensation - the good thing - I didn’t try to activate an active histogram, though it would have made exposure compensation a lot more useful and to work with. Again, this could probably be fixed in firmware.
We missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, particularly bright light or with all the telephoto lens which doesn’t lend itself well to being held out at arms length. The J1 only has a glass dust shield as it’s defense against unwanted debris, instead of the more proactive sensor cleaning unit that the V1 offers, as well as the smaller battery implies that you’ll need to buy an additional one to arrive at the day’s heavy shooting. Deficiency of an accessory port shows that almost none of the Nikon 1 accessories are suitable for the J1, like the external flash and GPS unit.
One more thing we wouldn’t like was that the camera would always show the photo just taken a couple of seconds onscreen, and we didn’t are able to turn this instant postview function completely off (while you can at least cancel it by way of a half-press from the shutter release). Finally, even though the camera is normally fast and responsive, your camera takes way too long to awaken from sleep mode if this has been idle for a short time, resulting in many missed shots.
In fact, the Nikon 1 J1 is often a small , compact, high-performance system camera they like its big brother can use several tweaks to its interface to increase suit the requirements of serious amateurs. The intended marketplace of casual users will require to it for its sheer speed, built-in flash, lightweight along with the fun features it includes. Let’s now discover 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