Article on Nikon 1 J1: Completely new Nikon Mirroless Dslr cameras
The Nikon 1 J1 is often a stylish compact system camera featuring a 10-megapixel “CX” format sensor and the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Boasting continuous shooting speeds as high as 60 fps 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 offers more conventional shooting modes like Programmed Auto, Aperture and Shutter Priority, and also Metered Manual. Also up to speed is a built-in pop-up flash using a guide amount of 5, a 3 inch rear display and an electronic shutter. Charging $649.95 / 549.99 that has a 10-30mm contact, $699.95 / 599.99 having a 10mm pancake lens, or $799.95 / 699.99 in a double-lens kit with 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 mostly crafted from aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts and is particularly therefore heavier than you would think based on its size alone, weighing in at 234g with the body only. In addition, it feels higher quality compared to official product shots would have you believe. Through an essentially grip-less design, the Nikon J1 is very much a two-handed affair that requires someone to support the camera’s weight in the left hand, clutching the lens, and make use of your right hand for balance and operating the controls. This is really the good thing mainly because it forces you to pay attention to holding the digital camera properly, which inturn goes far towards avoiding shake-induced blur with 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 on the ancient F mount, it’s actually a brand spanking new design providing you with 100% electronic communication between your attached lens along with the camera body, due to a dozen contacts. Exactly like for the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, you will find there’s white dot for easy lens alignment, although it has moved in the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) to # 1 in the mount. The lenses themselves feature a short silver ridge about the lens barrel, which ought to be in alignment with said dot in order for one to be capable of attach the lens towards the camera. Although this might require a certain amount of acclamating yourself with, this process makes changing lenses quicker and easier.
Without lens attached, you can view the sensor sitting right behind the plane on the bayonet mount. Like the mount itself, the sensor is new. Measuring 13.2×8.8mm this “CX” format imaging chip has double expanse of the biggest imagers used in compact and bridge cameras such as the Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, only most of the area of a standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip includes a 1.36x longer diagonal versus the Nikon CX imager. Provided that Four Thirds has a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” ends up to around 2.72, and thus a 10mm lens has approximately exactly the same angle of view as a 27.2mm lens with 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.
The remainder of the Nikon J1’s faceplate is actually empty, featuring just the lens release, a receiver with the optional ML-L3 infrared handheld remote control, two narrow slits for that microphone either side of the lens, plus an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There is no grip whatsoever about the front of the Nikon 1 J1.
There are two strategies to powering within the Nikon 1 V1. You may either use the on/off button sitting near the shutter release or, when you have a collapsible-barrel standard zoom lens attached, just press the unlocking button within the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an act that causes the camera to exchange on automatically. It becomes an ingenious solution because you require to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes approximately a 2nd - absolutely nothing to write home about but still decent and entirely adequate.
You may frame your shots while using rear screen - there is absolutely no electronic viewfinder as around the V1 model, an important difference between the 2. 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, either in bright sunlit conditions or with all the 30-110mm telezoom lens as holding your camera as much as eye-level helped to stabilise the lens avoiding trembling camera.
The control layout is very peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 has a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks almost all of the shooting modes which are usually available on similar dials - that include P, A, S and M - eventhough it has enough room to fit them. These modes are offered for the J1 however, you have to dive in to the rather long-winded and never entirely logical menu to find them. The J1’s mode dial just 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. Although this isn’t a bad selection of functions, the belief that there isn’t a ISO button will doubtlessly create a lot of photographers enthusiastic about getting the Nikon J1 to become unhappy.
There’s a button on the rear labelled “F” but alas, it is not a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it allows you to quickly pick from the continuous shooting modes, whilst in Video mode it lets you toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There are 2 more significant controls around the back on the camera, including a scroll wheel throughout the four-way pad and a rocker switch marked having a loupe icon. The scroll wheel is employed to create the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (when you have found them within the menu, that may be), even though the rocker switch controls the aperture. Exactly why it’s got a loupe icon alongside it really is that it control can be used to zoom in upon an image to check on for critical concentrate Playback mode. Lastly, there are four small buttons round the navigation pad, flush resistant to the rear panel of the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.
So what on earth are those shooting modes about the mode dial exactly about? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked with a green camera icon, is to will want to be quite often. With all the mode dial set to this particular position, you may pick your desired exposure mode on the menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a great auto mode where the camera analyses the scene when in front of its lens and picks what it thinks will be the right mode for that one scene. It’s also possible to pick one with the conventional PASM modes, which offer you full menu access as well as the power to manually set the aperture, shutter speed, or both (Program AE Shift is available in P mode). ISO and white balance may also be manually selected, but only from the menu, as stated previously.
Obviously there’s AWB and auto ISO also, with the latter arriving three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) letting you specify how high you wish the camera to look if the light gets low. You may also pick from three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, in which the camera takes control of exactly what it focusses on (this is not an excellent mode to get because your default as being the camera obviously can’t read the mind and will consentrate on something different than your actual subject); Single Point, that you can make one among 135 AF points frist by hitting OK and moving the active AF point across the frame while using four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, in which you pick your subject, press OK and allow your camera in order to that subject as it moves around, providing doesn’t necessarily leave the frame certainly.
The Nikon 1 J1 comes with an intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that combines contrast- and phase-difference detection similarly as the Fujifilm F300EXR did. This enables the Nikon 1 J1 to concentrate extremely quickly in good light, even on a moving subject. The corporation claims the Nikon 1 system cameras would be the fastest-focusing machines on this planet, and this also 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 as soon as another method. It is usually you that decides which AF technique to use - the person has no affect this.
Normally, the J1 usually only resort to contrast detection when light levels are low. In good light, i was able to take sharp photos of fast-moving subjects. The Nikon J1 certainly does not disappoint here. Manual focusing is also possible, however the Nikon 1 lenses do not possess focus rings. In order to focus manually, you initially need to hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK after which utilize scroll wheel to adjust focus. To work with you with this particular, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central section of the image and displays a rudimentary focus scale across the right side with the frame - but those would be the only focusing helps you get. There isn’t any peaking function available as on some rival models.
The J1 comes with a electronic shutter (the V1 has a mechanical shutter). It is absolutely silent (the main focus confirmation beep could be disabled from your menu) and allows the use of shutter speeds you’d like 1/16,000th of an second and, while using Electronic Hi setting selected, lets you shoot full-resolution stills at 60 fps. Note however that while this is the major achievement, it’s on a a buffer that can only hold 12 raw files. Additionally, the usage of this mode precludes AF tracking - you must lower the frame rate to 10fps if you would like that -, along with the viewfinder goes blank while the pictures are increasingly being taken. About the only application we are able to think about where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really be convenient is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. With this rate, a number of 5 bracketed shots could be used less than 0.1 second, rendering small movements that can otherwise pose alignment problems - like leaves being blown inside the wind - a non-issue. Alas, the Nikon J1 isn’t going to offer this sort of feature - in truth it doesn’t offer autoexposure bracketing in any way.
Trying film mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. First and foremost, the digital camera could be set to shoot Full HD footage, and you also even get to choose between 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, dependant upon whether you want to assist progressive or interlaced video. Unless you need Full HD, additionally, there are 720p @ 60fps, which can be really smooth nevertheless counts as high-definition. Secondly, you will get full manual control of exposure in video mode. This is an option; you don’t need to shoot in M mode however you can if that is things you need. Thirdly, you get fast, continuous AF in video mode, and it works well, specifically in good light. Movies are compressed using 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 are able to take multiple full-resolution stills whilst recording HD video. This works the opposite way round too - you are able to capture a motion picture clip even if the mode dial is within the Still Image position, by just pressing the red movie shutter release. We’ve learned that in cases like this the digital camera will invariably record the recording at 720p/60fps.
Not only is it 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 gloomier and the aspect ratio is an ultra-widescreen 2.67:1, but the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo and stuff like that. These videos are played back at 30fps, that is a lot more than 13x slower compared to capture speed of 400fps, permitting you to get creative and show the world a multitude of interesting phenomena that happen too soon to see instantly. The Nikon J1 goes a little more forward by offering a 1200fps video mode, however the resolution and overall quality is simply too poor for the to be genuinely useful.
The 3rd icon on the mode dial represents Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows the camera to capture at least 20 photos at the single press on the shutter release, including some which were taken before fully depressing the button. The camera analyses the average person pictures inside the series and discards 15 ones, keeping exactly the five it thinks are best regarding 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 location where the camera records a quick high-definition movie - whose buffering starts with a half-press from the shutter release, so again includes events which in fact had happened before the button was fully depressed - and also needs a still photograph. The movie as well as the still image are stored in separate files nevertheless the camera can combine them in to a single slow-motion clip with music. It’s fun but we simply cannot really envision people applying this shooting mode regularly. (When you see the video on the computer, it is going to play back at normal speed, without sound, which means you mode is very only interesting should you observe the clip in-camera or hook your camera up to an HDTV with an HDMI cable.)
The Nikon J1 stores photos and videos on SD/SDHC/SDXC memory cards, and supports the fastest UHS-I speed class. Your camera runs using a compact EN-EL20 battery to the V1 big brother, and it is consequently able to produce much less shots for a passing fancy charge, managing around 230, while it helps to generate the digital camera body scaled-down. The camera’s tripod socket is made from metal and is particularly situated line together with the lens’ optical axis. And also this signifies that changing batteries or cards is not possible as you move the J1 is installed on a tripod, because hinges from the battery/card compartment door are extremely near the tripod mount.
So, how did we love to using the Nikon 1 J1? On one side, we liked it a lot. In good light, its auto-focus technique is indeed faster than essentially anything we’ve used thus far, being able to track and lock focus on an array of truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding many sharp images in situations where our keeper rates haven’t been very high. Additionally, its high-speed continuous shooting modes have allowed us to capture interesting moments that we’d have surely missed if we had used a slower camera. The built-in pop-up flash proved more useful that its modest guide number might suggest, using the clever design minimising red-eye.
Conversely, the Nikon J1 does have it’s share of frustrating idiosyncrasies beginning from an individual interface that forces you to dive in the menu to get into functions as basic as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons into a finished product, they are able to a minimum of make “F” button customisable using a firmware update. Also, while there is a separate button for exposure compensation - a great thing - I didnrrrt are able to activate an active histogram, although it can have made exposure compensation a lot more useful and easy to utilize. Again, this will apt to be fixed in firmware.
We missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, particularly in bright light or with all the telephoto lens which does not lend itself well to being held out at arms length. The J1 only has a glass dust shield since it is defense against unwanted debris, instead of the more proactive sensor cleaning unit which the V1 offers, and the smaller battery ensures that you should buy an additional one to arrive at the day’s heavy shooting. Having less an accessory port ensures that almost no Nikon 1 accessories are suitable for the J1, for example the external flash and GPS unit.
One more thing we failed to like could be that the camera would always show the image just taken for a couple of seconds onscreen, and we didn’t find a way to turn this instant postview function completely off (even if you can at any rate cancel it via a half-press on the shutter release). Finally, while the camera is often fast and responsive, you takes far too long to wake up from sleep mode gets hotter may be idle for a while, causing numerous missed shots.
In fact, the Nikon 1 J1 is really a small , compact, high-performance system camera that they like its government could use a few tweaks to the interface to improve suit the needs of serious amateurs. The intended audience of casual users should it due to the sheer speed, built-in flash, compact size and also the fun features it provides. Why don’t we 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