Writeup on Nikon 1 J1: Unique Nikon Mirroless Digital cameras
The Nikon 1 J1 is usually 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 and also a unique Motion Snapshot Mode, the portable Nikon J1 even offers more conventional shooting modes like Programmed Auto, Aperture and Shutter Priority, and also Metered Manual. Also fully briefed is really a built-in pop-up flash that has a guide volume of 5, a 3 inch rear display and an electronic shutter. Priced at $649.95 / 549.99 using a 10-30mm contact, $699.95 / 599.99 with a 10mm pancake lens, or $799.95 / 699.99 in a double-lens kit with all 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 generally made out of aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts and it is therefore heavier than what you know already dependant on its size alone, weighing 234g with the body only. In addition, it feels higher quality compared to the official product shots maybe have you believe. Through an essentially grip-less design, the Nikon J1 is extremely much a two-handed affair that needs you to support the camera’s weight inside the left-hand, clutching the lens, and use your right hand for balance and operating the controls. This is a very important thing since it can make you take note of holding you properly, which 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. As an alternative to like a scaled-down version with the traditional F mount, it’s really a fresh design that gives 100% electronic communication between attached lens plus the camera body, for a dozen contacts. Exactly like for the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, we have a white dot for straightforward lens alignment, eventhough it has moved through the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) to the top from the mount. The lenses themselves use a short silver ridge on the lens barrel, which needs to be in alignment with said dot in order for that you have the capacity to attach the lens to your camera. Even though this may necessitate some becoming familiar with, it really makes changing lenses quicker and easier.
Without having lens attached, you can observe the sensor sitting right 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 double the amount floor of the most popular imagers found in compact and bridge cameras much like the Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, but only about 50 % the spot of any standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip incorporates a 1.36x longer diagonal versus the Nikon CX imager. Considering that Four Thirds has a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” works out to about 2.72, which means a 10mm lens has approximately a similar angle of view to be 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 other Nikon J1’s faceplate is actually empty, featuring just the lens release, a receiver for your optional ML-L3 infrared handy remote control, two narrow slits for your microphone both sides on the lens, plus an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There’s no grip by any means for the front in the Nikon 1 J1.
The two main ways of powering on the Nikon1 J1. You may make use of the on/off button sitting next to the shutter release or, when you have a collapsible-barrel contact attached, just press the unlocking button about the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an act that causes the digital camera to interchange on automatically. It is deemed 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 however decent and entirely adequate.
You are able to frame your shots while using rear screen - there is absolutely no electronic viewfinder as around the V1 model, an integral difference between the 2 main. The LCD screen is really 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 a choice of bright sunlit conditions or while using the 30-110mm telezoom lens as holding the camera approximately eye-level helped to stabilise the lens and steer clear of camera shake.
The control layout is very peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 incorporates a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks almost all of the shooting modes that happen to be usually seen on similar dials - especially P, A, S and M - although it has enough room to accommodate them. These modes are offered around the J1 but you must dive in to the rather long-winded instead of entirely logical menu to get them. The J1’s mode dial merely has four settings, Photo, Video, Motion Snapshot and Smart Photo Selector. The four-way controller 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 is not a bad range of functions, the belief that there’s no ISO button will doubtlessly cause a great deal of photographers considering purchasing the Nikon J1 to become unhappy.
There is a button on the rear labelled “F” but alas, this is not a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it permits you to quickly select from the continuous shooting modes, during Video mode it helps you to toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There’s two more important controls on the back with the camera, together with a scroll wheel round the four-way pad as well as a rocker switch marked with a loupe icon. The scroll wheel is employed to put the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (once you’ve found them inside the menu, that is certainly), whilst the rocker switch controls the aperture. The key reason why it’s got a loupe icon near to it can be until this control can be used to focus with an image to check for critical focus in Playback mode. Lastly, there are four small buttons throughout the navigation pad, flush resistant to the rear panel in the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.
Just what exactly are shooting modes for the mode dial exactly about? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked that has a green camera icon, is to should be more often than not. With the mode dial set to the position, it is possible to pick your desired exposure mode from the menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a smart auto mode when the camera analyses the scene in front of its lens and picks exactly what it thinks is the right way of that specific scene. You can even pick one on the conventional PASM modes, which provide you with full menu access and the chance to manually set the aperture, shutter speed, or both (Program AE Shift comes in P mode). ISO and white balance can also be manually selected, only in the menu, as stated earlier.
Naturally there’s AWB and auto ISO as well, with the latter arriving three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) letting you specify how high you would like the camera to travel when the light gets low. Also you can choose between three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, the place that the camera takes charge of what it focusses on (this isn’t an excellent mode to own when your default because the camera obviously can’t read your brain and might target something else than your actual subject); Single Point, where you can decide considered one of 135 AF points beginning with hitting OK after which moving the active AF point about the frame with all the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, where you pick your subject, press OK and let the digital camera to follow that subject because it moves around, as long as it does not leave the frame naturally.
The Nikon 1 J1 has an intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that combines contrast- and phase-difference detection likewise as being the Fujifilm F300EXR did. This gives the Nikon 1 J1 to focus extremely quickly in good light, even on a moving subject. The corporation claims the Nikon 1 system cameras are definitely the fastest-focusing machines on the planet, and this also matches our experience - providing 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 you’d like additional method. It is your camera that decides which AF solution to use - the user doesn’t have a impact on this.
Generally speaking, the J1 will often only use 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 the Nikon 1 lenses do not possess focus rings. If you would like focus manually, first you should hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK and after that use the scroll wheel to modify focus. To be of assistance on this, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central part of the image and displays a rudimentary focus scale on the right side with the frame - but those will be the only focusing aids you get. There is no peaking function available as on some rival models.
The J1 has an electronic shutter (the V1 boasts a mechanical shutter). It is absolutely silent (the main objective confirmation beep could be disabled through the menu) and allows the use of shutter speeds you’d like 1/16,000th of your second and, with all the Electronic Hi setting selected, enables you to shoot full-resolution stills at 60 frames per second. Note however that although this can be a major achievement, it’s restricted by a buffer that can only hold 12 raw files. Additionally, the utilization of this mode precludes AF tracking - you will need to lower the frame rate to 10fps if you’d like that -, and the viewfinder goes blank while the pictures are increasingly being taken. The linksys e2000 application we could visualize where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really be useful is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. Only at that rate, several 5 bracketed shots may be consumed in below 0.1 second, rendering small movements that could 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 - the truth is it does not offer autoexposure bracketing by any means.
Moving on to film mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. Above all, the camera might be set to shoot Full HD footage, and you also even are able to select 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, based on whether you want to use progressive or interlaced video. If you don’t need Full HD, there’s also 720p @ 60fps, that is really smooth whilst still being counts as high definition. Secondly, you get full manual control over exposure in video mode. It is deemed an option; you don’t have to shoot in M mode nevertheless, you can if that’s the thing you need. Thirdly, you have fast, continuous AF in video mode, and delay well, particularly 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 thanks to this - and also the massive processing power on the Nikon J1 - you can take multiple full-resolution stills at the same time recording HD video. This works the other way round too - you may capture a show clip even when 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 you will record the playback quality at 720p/60fps.
In addition to being efficient at shooting regular movies in HD quality, the Nikon 1 J1 can also shoot video at 400fps for slow-motion playback. The resolution is gloomier along with the aspect ratio is surely an ultra-widescreen 2.67:1, but the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo and so on. These videos are replayed at 30fps, that’s over 13x slower versus the capture speed of 400fps, permitting you to get creative and prove to the world an array of interesting phenomena that happen too rapidly to see instantly. The Nikon J1 goes even more through providing a 1200fps video mode, but the resolution and overall quality is too poor with the for being genuinely useful.
The 3rd icon for the mode dial represents Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows the digital camera to capture at the very least 20 photos at the single press in the shutter release, including some which are taken before fully depressing the button. You analyses the individual pictures from the series and discards 15 of those, keeping merely the five so it thinks might be best with regards to sharpness and composition. This feature is usually genuinely useful when photographing fast action and fleeting moments.
Finally, there exists a so-called Motion Snapshot mode the location where the camera records a shorter high-definition movie - whose buffering starts at the half-press in the shutter release, so again includes events which had happened prior to a button was fully depressed - and in addition requires a still photograph. The film as well as the still image are residing in separate files but the camera can combine them in a single slow-motion clip with music. It’s fun but we can not really envision people using this shooting mode frequently. (In case you look at the video using a computer, it’ll play back at normal speed, without sound, which means this mode is absolutely only interesting when you view the clip in-camera or hook the digital camera around an HDTV via an HDMI cable.)
The Nikon J1 stores photos and videos on SD/SDHC/SDXC memory cards, and props up fastest UHS-I speed class. You is run on a smaller EN-EL20 battery to the V1 our government, and is consequently capable of producing much less shots using one charge, managing around 230, though it helps to generate the digital camera body small. The camera’s tripod socket consists of metal and is also situated in line while using lens’ optical axis. And also this implies that changing batteries or cards is not possible even though the J1 is attached with a tripod, as the hinges on the battery/card compartment door are extremely close to the tripod mount.
So, how did we love to while using the Nikon 1 J1? Similarly, we liked it a lot. In good light, its auto-focus technique is indeed faster than basically anything we’ve used so far, being able to track and lock consentrate on a selection of truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding many sharp images in situations where our keeper rates never been high. Additionally, its high-speed continuous shooting modes have allowed us to capture interesting moments that we’d have surely missed after we had used a slower camera. The built-in pop-up flash proved more useful the reason is modest guide number might suggest, with the clever design minimising red-eye.
Alternatively, the Nikon J1 has its share of frustrating idiosyncrasies you start with the person interface that can make you dive in to 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 “F” button customisable using a firmware update. Also, nevertheless there is a devoted button for exposure compensation - that is a advantage - Some are able to activate an active histogram, community . might have made exposure compensation far more useful as well as simple make use of. Again, this could probably be fixed in firmware.
We missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, specifically in bright light or aided by the telephoto lens which does not lend itself well to being held out at arms length. The J1 only has a glass dust shield because it’s defense against unwanted debris, instead of the more proactive sensor cleaning unit which the V1 offers, and the smaller battery implies that you’ll need to buy another you to definitely go through the day’s heavy shooting. The lack of an accessory port signifies that almost none of the Nikon 1 accessories are suitable for the J1, like the external flash and GPS unit.
Yet another thing we did not like could be that the camera would always show the picture just taken for some seconds onscreen, and now we wouldn’t be capable of turn this instant postview function completely off (while you can at least cancel it via a half-press of the shutter release). Finally, whilst the camera is generally fast and responsive, you takes excessively long to awaken from sleep mode if it has become idle for some time, leading to several missed shots.
Of course, the Nikon 1 J1 is really a smaller than average compact, high-performance system camera they like its our government are able to use a couple of tweaks to its graphical user interface to improve suit the requirements of serious amateurs. The intended market you work in of casual users should it for the sheer speed, built-in flash, compact size along with the fun features it provides. Let’s now observe how the Nikon 1 J1 fared inside image quality department.
Tags: j1, mirroless cameras, nikon, nikon 1, nikon 1 j1, nikon 1 v1, nikon cameras, nikon1, v1