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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 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 a unique Motion Snapshot Mode, the portable Nikon J1 now 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 with a guide amount of 5, a 3 inch rear display as well as an electronic shutter. Costing $649.95 / 549.99 that has a 10-30mm contact lens, $699.95 / 599.99 with a 10mm pancake lens, or $799.95 / 699.99 in the double-lens kit with all the 10-30mm and 30-110mm zoom lenses, the Nikon 1 J1 is scheduled to take a sale later this month.

The Nikon 1 J1 is mainly created from aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts and is particularly therefore heavier than what you know already depending on its size alone, coming in at 234g for the body only. It also feels better made than the official product shots maybe have you believe. With an essentially grip-less design, the Nikon J1 is extremely much a two-handed affair that will require someone to retain the camera’s weight within the left-hand, clutching the lens, and use your right hand for balance and operating the controls. This is a very important thing as it can make you look closely at holding the digital camera properly, which inturn goes further towards avoiding shake-induced blur as part of your photos.

The camera’s clean, minimalist front plate is covered with the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Rather than like a scaled-down version from the traditional F mount, it’s a completely new design that gives 100% electronic communication between attached lens along with the camera body, for a dozen contacts. Much like around the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, there’s a white dot for simple lens alignment, even though it has moved from your 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) to the top of the mount. The lenses themselves include a short silver ridge for the lens barrel, which should be in alignment with said dot to enable someone to manage to attach the lens to the camera. While this may necessitate a little adjusting to, it really makes changing lenses quicker and easier.

Without lens attached, you will see the sensor sitting right behind the plane from the bayonet mount. Like the mount itself, the sensor is completely new. Measuring 13.2×8.8mm this “CX” format imaging chip has double the amount floor of the largest imagers employed in compact and bridge cameras such as Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, but only most the vicinity of any standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip carries a 1.36x longer diagonal than the Nikon CX imager. Since Four Thirds carries a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” calculates to around 2.72, and thus a 10mm lens has approximately the identical angle of view as being a 27.2mm lens upon 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 with regard to its angle-of-view range.

Other Nikon J1’s faceplate is almost empty, featuring the lens release, a receiver for the optional ML-L3 infrared handy remote control, two narrow slits with the microphone either sides on the lens, with an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There is not any grip at all around the front from the Nikon 1 J1.

The two main options for powering around the Nikon 1 V1. You can either use the on/off button sitting next to the shutter release or, should you have a collapsible-barrel standard zoom lens attached, you can simply press the unlocking button around the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an act that triggers your camera to exchange on automatically. This is an ingenious solution because you require to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes approximately a 2nd - not even attempt to write home about but nonetheless decent and entirely adequate.

You can frame your shots utilizing the rear screen - there is absolutely no electronic viewfinder as within the V1 model, an integral distinction between the two. The LCD screen can be 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 when using the J1 alongside the V1, in either bright sunlit conditions or aided by the 30-110mm telezoom lens as holding the camera approximately eye-level helped to stabilise the lens and prevent trembling camera.

The control layout is pretty peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 includes a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks the majority of the shooting modes which are usually seen on similar dials - most notably P, A, S and M - even though it has enough room to support them. These modes are offered around the J1 however you ought to dive in to the rather long-winded and never entirely logical menu to seek out them. The J1’s mode dial has only four settings, Photo, Video, Motion Snapshot and Smart Photo Selector. The four-way controller even 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 isn’t a bad number of functions, the belief that there isn’t a ISO button will doubtlessly cause a lots of photographers thinking about buying the Nikon J1 being unhappy.

There exists a button about the rear labelled “F” but alas, this is simply not a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it enables you to quickly select from the continuous shooting modes, during Video mode it allows you to toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There’s 2 more valuable controls for the back in the camera, including a scroll wheel throughout the four-way pad along with a rocker switch marked that has a loupe icon. The scroll wheel is needed to set the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (once you’ve found them in the menu, that may be), while the rocker switch controls the aperture. The key reason why it has a loupe icon close to it’s until this control is employed to focus upon an image to check for critical concentrate Playback mode. Finally, you will discover four small buttons across the navigation pad, flush contrary to the rear panel with the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.

Just what exactly are the ones shooting modes about the mode dial about? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked that has a green camera icon, is where you will need to be quite often. With all the mode dial set to the present position, you are able to pick your desired exposure mode from your menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a great auto mode in which the camera analyses the scene facing its lens and picks just what it thinks could be the right mode for that particular scene. It’s also possible to pick one of the conventional PASM modes, which present 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 on the menu, as stated previously.

Naturally there’s AWB and auto ISO too, using the latter coming in three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) letting you specify how high you want the digital camera to visit if the light gets low. You can also choose between three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, when the camera takes charge of what it really focusses on (this is simply not an excellent mode to own since your default because camera obviously can’t read your thoughts and might concentrate on something different than your actual subject); Single Point, where you can decide one of 135 AF points frist by hitting OK and after that moving the active AF point across the frame utilizing the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, that you pick your subject, press OK and allow you to track that subject the way it moves around, as long as it won’t leave the frame needless to say.

The Nikon 1 J1 comes with an intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that combines contrast- and phase-difference detection likewise as being the Fujifilm F300EXR did. This enables the Nikon 1 J1 to concentrate extremely quickly in good light, even on a moving subject. The organization claims the Nikon 1 system cameras are the fastest-focusing machines on the globe, which matches our experience - as long as there’s enough light. When light levels drop, you switches to contrast-detect AF which, though faster than you are on most cameras, isn’t nearly as fast as the other method. It certainly is the camera that decides which AF approach to use - anyone doesn’t have any influence on this.

Generally speaking, the J1 will often 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 does not disappoint here. Manual focusing is additionally possible, although Nikon 1 lenses don’t have focus rings. If you wish to focus manually, you first need to hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK then make use of the scroll wheel to focus. To help you using this type of, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central portion of the image and displays a rudimentary focus scale on the right side with the frame - but those are definitely the only focusing helps you get. There is absolutely no peaking function available as on some rival models.

The J1 has an electronic shutter (the V1 boasts an analog shutter). Itrrrs very silent (the target confirmation beep could be disabled from the menu) and allows the utilization of shutter speeds as fast as 1/16,000th of the second and, using the Electronic Hi setting selected, lets you 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 must lower the frame rate to 10fps if you wish that -, and the viewfinder goes blank as you move the pictures will be taken. The only application we can consider where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really be useful is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. As of this rate, some 5 bracketed shots might be consumed in below 0.1 second, rendering small movements that can otherwise pose alignment problems - like leaves being blown inside wind - a non-issue. Alas, the Nikon J1 does not offer this sort of feature - in fact no offer autoexposure bracketing in any way.

Trying the video mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. Most notably, you may be set to shoot Full HD footage, therefore you even reach select from 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, according to whether you want to use progressive or interlaced video. If you don’t need Full HD, additionally, there are 720p @ 60fps, that’s really smooth yet still counts as hd. Secondly, you have full manual treating exposure in video mode. It becomes an option; you won’t need to shoot in M mode however, you can if that’s what you need. Thirdly, you obtain fast, continuous AF in video mode, and delay well, specifically in good light. Movies are compressed utilizing the H.264 codec and stored as MOV files. You’ll find separate shutter release buttons for stills and video, and because of this - along with the massive processing power in the Nikon J1 - you may take multiple full-resolution stills while recording HD video. This works the other way round too - you’ll be able to capture a film clip regardless if the mode dial influences Still Image position, merely by pressing the red movie shutter release. We’ve found out that in this case you will forever record the recording at 720p/60fps.

And also competent at shooting regular movies in HD quality, the Nikon 1 J1 could also shoot video at 400fps for slow-motion playback. The resolution is lower as well as the aspect ratio is an ultra-widescreen 2.67:1, but the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo and so on. These videos are replayed at 30fps, which can be in excess of 13x slower as opposed to capture speed of 400fps, helping you to get creative and prove to the world several interesting phenomena that happen too soon to see in real time. The Nikon J1 goes even further through providing a 1200fps video mode, though the resolution and overall quality is just too poor for that to be genuinely useful.

The third icon for the mode dial symbolizes Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows the camera to capture no less than 20 photos with a single press on the shutter release, including some that had been taken before fully depressing the button. Your camera analyses the individual pictures inside series and discards 15 of them, keeping just the five who’s thinks might be best in terms of sharpness and composition. This feature might be genuinely useful when photographing fast action and fleeting moments.

Finally, there’s a so-called Motion Snapshot mode the place that the camera records a short high-definition movie - whose buffering starts at a half-press in the shutter release, so again includes events that had happened prior to the button was fully depressed - plus requires a still photograph. The film along with the still image are stored in separate files but the camera can combine them right into a single slow-motion clip with music. It’s fun but we’re not able to really envision people making use of this shooting mode on a regular basis. (If you observe the video on a computer, it will play back at normal speed, without sound, this mode is really only interesting in case you view the clip in-camera or hook your camera approximately an HDTV via 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 runs on a reduced EN-EL20 battery to the V1 your government, and is consequently able to produce even less shots on one charge, managing around 230, though it does help to create you body more compact. The camera’s tripod socket is constructed of metal and it is situated line while using lens’ optical axis. This too shows that changing batteries or cards isn’t likely whilst the J1 is attached with a tripod, since the hinges with 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 a great deal. In good light, its auto-focus strategy is indeed faster than virtually anything we’ve used until now, having the ability to track and lock target a variety of truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding a lot of sharp images in situations where our keeper rates haven’t ever 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 the modest guide number might suggest, using the clever design minimising red-eye.

Alternatively, the Nikon J1 does have it’s share of frustrating idiosyncrasies starting with an individual 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 with a finished product, they can at least make “F” button customisable via a firmware update. Also, to find out a dedicated button for exposure compensation - that is a positive thing - Some are able to activate an active histogram, even though it would have made exposure compensation much more useful and simple make use of. Again, this might apt to be fixed in firmware.

We also missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, specially in bright light or while using the telephoto lens which doesn’t 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, rather than more proactive sensor cleaning unit the V1 offers, plus the smaller battery signifies that you should buy an extra you to definitely get through a day’s heavy shooting. The lack of an accessory port signifies that almost not one of the Nikon 1 accessories are that will work with the J1, including the external flash and GPS unit.

One more thing we wouldn’t like could be that the camera would always show the picture just taken for a couple seconds onscreen, and we did not are able to turn this instant postview function completely off (although you can at any rate cancel it via a half-press on the shutter release). Finally, whilst the camera is usually fast and responsive, the digital camera takes way too long to wake from sleep mode if this continues to be idle for a short time, leading to many missed shots.

Of course, the Nikon 1 J1 is often a small, and compact, high-performance system camera they enjoy its our government are able to use a couple of tweaks to the user interface to increase suit the requirements serious amateurs. The intended audience of casual users will enjoy it because of its sheer speed, built-in flash, lightweight and also the fun features there is. We will now observe the Nikon 1 J1 fared in the image quality department.