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The Nikon 1 J1 is often a stylish compact system camera which has a 10-megapixel “CX” format sensor as well as the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Boasting continuous shooting speeds as much as 60 frames per second at full resolution, Full HD video capture, an ultra-fast hybrid auto-focus system, Smart Photo Selector as well as a unique Motion Snapshot Mode, the portable Nikon J1 offers 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 using a guide amount of 5, a 3 inch rear display with an electronic shutter. Coming in at $649.95 / 549.99 with a 10-30mm standard zoom lens, $699.95 / 599.99 which has a 10mm pancake lens, or $799.95 / 699.99 in the 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 generally created from aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts and is also therefore heavier than what you know already based on its size alone, weighing in at 234g for the body only. Furthermore, it feels better made as opposed to official product shots would have you believe. With an essentially grip-less design, the Nikon J1 can be quite much a two-handed affair that will need that you retain the camera’s weight in the left hand, clutching the lens, and employ your right hand for balance and operating the controls. This is actually a good thing the way it forces you to look closely at holding you properly, which experts claim goes quite a distance towards avoiding shake-induced blur inside your photos.

The camera’s clean, minimalist front plate is covered with the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. As an alternative to as being a scaled-down version from the ancient F mount, it is just a completely new design that delivers 100% electronic communication between attached lens as well as the camera body, from a dozen contacts. Similar to around the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, you will find there’s white dot for convenient lens alignment, eventhough it has moved in the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) to the peak in the mount. The lenses themselves feature a short silver ridge on the lens barrel, which must be in alignment with said dot to enable you to definitely have the ability to attach the lens to your camera. Of course this might require some becoming accustomed to, it genuinely makes changing lenses quicker and easier.

Without the need of lens attached, you can observe the sensor sitting directly behind the plane from the bayonet mount. Much like the mount itself, the sensor is brand new. Measuring 13.2×8.8mm this “CX” format imaging chip has double the expanse of the most popular imagers utilized in compact and bridge cameras much like the Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, but only about 50 % of the region of your standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip includes a 1.36x longer diagonal compared to the Nikon CX imager. Provided that Four Thirds carries a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” ends up to around 2.72, meaning that a 10mm lens has approximately exactly the same 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 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 almost empty, featuring just the lens release, a receiver for that optional ML-L3 infrared remote control, two narrow slits to the microphone either side with the lens, and an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There is no grip at all about the front with the Nikon 1 J1.

There are two strategies to powering within the Nikon 1 J1 and Nikon 1 V1. You may either makes use of the on/off button sitting near the shutter release or, in case 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 which causes your camera to exchange on automatically. It becomes an ingenious solution as you need to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes just over an additional - nothing to write home about but nonetheless decent and entirely adequate.

You may frame your shots utilizing the rear screen - there is absolutely no electronic viewfinder as around the V1 model, a vital distinction between the 2 main. The LCD screen is a three-inch, 460,000-dot display that features 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 a choice of bright sunlit conditions or with all the 30-110mm telezoom lens as holding the camera nearly eye-level helped to stabilise the lens and steer clear of camera shake.

The control layout is quite peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 carries a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks a lot of the shooting modes that happen to be usually available on similar dials - most notably P, A, S and M - eventhough it has enough room to support them. These modes can be purchased on the J1 however, you ought to dive in to the rather long-winded but not entirely logical menu to discover them. The J1’s mode dial has only 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 isn’t a bad range of functions, the reality that there isn’t a ISO button will doubtlessly produce a large amount of photographers considering buying the Nikon J1 to be unhappy.

There’s a button within the rear labelled “F” but alas, this isn’t a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it permits you to quickly make a choice from the continuous shooting modes, when it is in Video mode it permits you to toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There’s 2 more significant controls for the back with the camera, including a scroll wheel throughout the four-way pad and a rocker switch marked having a loupe icon. The scroll wheel can be used to set the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (once you have found them inside menu, that is), while the rocker switch controls the aperture. Exactly why it provides a loupe icon beside it can be that this control is utilized to focus by using an image to evaluate for critical focus in Playback mode. As a final point, you can find four small buttons about the navigation pad, flush up against the rear panel in the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.

Precisely what are the types shooting modes on the mode dial exactly about? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked having a green camera icon, is to try and should be quite often. With the mode dial set for this position, you’ll be able to pick your required exposure mode through the menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a smart automatic mode the location where the camera analyses the scene looking at its lens and picks what it thinks could be the right way of that particular scene. You may also select one with the conventional PASM modes, which supply you with full menu access plus the capability to manually set the aperture, shutter speed, or both (Program AE Shift will come in P mode). ISO and white balance can even be manually selected, but only in the menu, as already mentioned.

Of course there’s AWB and auto ISO too, with all 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 visit when the light gets low. You may also select three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, the place that the camera takes control of exactly what it focusses on (this isn’t a great mode to possess when your default since the camera obviously can’t read your head and could give attention to something else entirely than your actual subject); Single Point, where you can decide considered one of 135 AF points by first hitting OK and after that moving the active AF point around the frame while using the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, in which you pick your subject, press OK and allow you to monitor that subject mainly because it moves around, as long as it doesn’t leave the frame needless to say.

The Nikon 1 J1 comes with a intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that mixes contrast- and phase-difference detection in a similar way 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 earth, and this matches our experience - given that there’s enough light. When light levels drop, the digital camera switches to contrast-detect AF which, though faster compared to most cameras, isn’t nearly as fast as the other method. It really is the digital camera that decides which AF strategy to use - an individual doesn’t have any affect on this.

Most of the time, the J1 will often 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 does not disappoint here. Manual focusing is additionally possible, although the Nikon 1 lenses do not possess focus rings. In order to focus manually, first you should hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK and utilize scroll wheel to alter focus. To work with you using this, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central part of the image and displays a rudimentary focus scale along the right side from the frame - but those would be 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 boasts a mechanical shutter). Itrrrs very silent (the focus confirmation beep might be disabled in the menu) and allows the use of shutter speeds as soon as 1/16,000th of the second and, using the Electronic Hi setting selected, helps you to shoot full-resolution stills at 60 fps. Note however that although this is a major achievement, it’s tied to a buffer that will only hold 12 raw files. Additionally, the utilization of this mode precludes AF tracking - you have to lower the frame rate to 10fps if you need that -, plus the viewfinder goes blank as the pictures are being taken. The only application you can consider where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really prove useful is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. As of this rate, a few 5 bracketed shots may be drawn in less than 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 won’t offer this kind of feature - actually no offer autoexposure bracketing in any way.

Trying the playback quality mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. Above all, you is usually set to shoot Full HD footage, and also you even get to select 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, determined by whether you would like to help progressive or interlaced video. Should you not need Full HD, additionally, there are 720p @ 60fps, which is really smooth but still counts as hi-d. Secondly, you obtain full manual treating exposure in video mode. It is an option; you don’t have to shoot in M mode but you can if that’s what you need. Thirdly, you have fast, continuous AF in video mode, and delay pills work well, especially in good light. Movies are compressed with all the H.264 codec and stored as MOV files. You can find separate shutter release buttons for stills and video, and because of this - and also the massive processing power from the Nikon J1 - you may take multiple full-resolution stills while recording HD video. This works the other way round too - it is possible to capture a show clip regardless if the mode dial is in the Still Image position, simply by pressing the red movie shutter release. We’ve learned that in such cases you will forever record film at 720p/60fps.

And also efficient at shooting regular movies in HD quality, the Nikon 1 J1 may shoot video at 400fps for slow-motion playback. The resolution is less and also the aspect ratio can be an ultra-widescreen 2.67:1, nevertheless the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo and the like. These videos are replayed at 30fps, that is a lot more than 13x slower than the capture speed of 400fps, helping you to get creative and show the world a range of interesting phenomena that happen prematurely to observe in real time. The Nikon J1 goes a little more forward by providing a 1200fps video mode, even so the resolution and overall quality is just too poor for the to be genuinely useful.

The third icon on the mode dial means Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows the digital camera to capture a minimum of 20 photos with a single press of the shutter release, including some that have been taken before fully depressing the button. The camera analyses the average person pictures from the series and discards 15 ones, keeping the five who’s thinks would be best with regard to sharpness and composition. This feature might be genuinely useful when photographing fast action and fleeting moments.

Finally, we have a so-called Motion Snapshot mode when the camera records a brief high-definition movie - whose buffering starts in a half-press with the shutter release, so again includes events which have happened before the button was fully depressed - and as well takes a still photograph. The film plus the still image are residing in separate files nevertheless the camera can combine them right into a single slow-motion clip with music. It’s fun but we can not really envision people using this shooting mode regularly. (In the event you comprehend the video on a computer, it’s going to play back at normal speed, without sound, which means this mode is actually only interesting should you observe the clip in-camera or hook the digital camera as much as 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. Your camera runs on a smaller EN-EL20 battery to its V1 your government, and it is consequently able to produce much less shots on one charge, managing around 230, eventhough it does help for making you body scaled-down. The camera’s tripod socket is made from metal and is particularly found in line with the lens’ optical axis. This actually also signifies that changing batteries or cards isn’t likely as the J1 is attached to a tripod, because the hinges from the battery/card compartment door are so near the tripod mount.

So, how did we like with all the Nikon 1 J1? On one side, we liked it a whole lot. In good light, its auto-focus product is indeed faster than pretty much anything we’ve used to date, the ability to track and lock consentrate on a selection of truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding plenty of sharp images in situations where our keeper rates haven’t been 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 it is modest guide number might suggest, with all the clever design minimising red-eye.

Conversely, the Nikon J1 does have it’s share of frustrating idiosyncrasies beginning from the consumer interface that makes you dive in to the menu to reach functions as easy as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons to your finished product, they can at least have the “F” button customisable by using a firmware update. Also, as there is a passionate button for exposure compensation - which is a great thing - I didn’t find a way to activate an active histogram, eventhough it might have made exposure compensation additional useful and easy to use. Again, this could likely to end up fixed in firmware.

We missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, particularly in bright light or with the telephoto lens which does not 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, instead of the more proactive sensor cleaning unit how the V1 offers, and also the smaller battery means that you’ll need to buy a supplementary one to arrive at the day’s heavy shooting. Having less an accessory port means that almost no Nikon 1 accessories are that will work with the J1, such as the external flash and GPS unit.

Yet another thing we wouldn’t like was that the camera would always show the picture just taken for a few seconds onscreen, so we failed to find a way to turn this instant postview function completely off (while you can at least cancel it using a half-press of the shutter release). Finally, whilst the camera is usually fast and responsive, your camera takes way too long to arise from sleep mode gets hotter has been idle for a short time, leading to many missed shots.

In fact, the Nikon 1 J1 is really a smaller than average compact, high-performance system camera they like its big brother are able to use several tweaks to the graphical user interface to raised suit the requirements serious amateurs. The intended target market of casual users will require to it for its sheer speed, built-in flash, lightweight plus the fun features it provides. Let’s now observe the Nikon 1 J1 fared in the image quality department.