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The Nikon 1 J1 is usually a stylish compact system camera which has a 10-megapixel “CX” format sensor plus the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Boasting continuous shooting speeds as high 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 even offers more conventional shooting modes like Programmed Auto, Aperture and Shutter Priority, along with Metered Manual. Also agreeable is usually a built-in pop-up flash using a guide amount of 5, a 3 inch rear display along with an electronic shutter. Coming in at $649.95 / 549.99 that has a 10-30mm contact, $699.95 / 599.99 having a 10mm pancake lens, or $799.95 / 699.99 within a double-lens kit with the 10-30mm and 30-110mm zoom lenses, the Nikon 1 J1 is scheduled to take sale later this month.

The Nikon 1 J1 is usually crafted from aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts and is particularly therefore heavier than what you know already dependant on its size alone, weighing in at 234g with the body only. In addition, it feels better made as opposed to official product shots would have you believe. Having an essentially grip-less design, the Nikon J1 is quite much a two-handed affair that requires someone to support the camera’s weight inside left-hand, clutching the lens, and rehearse your right hand for balance and operating the controls. A great the best thing mainly because it can make you be aware of holding your camera properly, which experts claim goes further 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 being a scaled-down version with the classic F mount, it’s a fresh design that can offer 100% electronic communication relating to the attached lens along with the camera body, for a dozen contacts. Exactly like for the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, you will find there’s white dot for simple lens alignment, although it has moved on the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) to the top of the mount. The lenses themselves come with a short silver ridge on the lens barrel, which must be in alignment with said dot to enable you to have the capacity to attach the lens on the camera. Of course this may require a little becoming accustomed to, this process makes changing lenses quicker and simpler.

Without having lens attached, you can observe the sensor sitting directly behind the plane of the bayonet mount. Much like the mount itself, the sensor is brand new. Measuring 13.2×8.8mm this “CX” format imaging chip has quantity area of the most popular imagers employed in compact and bridge cameras much like the Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, only about 50 % the region of the standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip carries a 1.36x longer diagonal compared to the Nikon CX imager. Since Four Thirds carries a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” works out to about 2.72, which means that a 10mm lens has approximately a similar angle of view as being a 27.2mm lens by using 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 in terms of its angle-of-view range.

All of those other Nikon J1’s faceplate is actually empty, featuring just the lens release, a receiver for the optional ML-L3 infrared handheld remote control, two narrow slits with the microphone either sides on the lens, and an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There is no grip by any means for the front with the Nikon 1 J1.

There’s 2 methods for powering within the Nikon 1 V1. Either utilize the on/off button sitting near the shutter release or, in case you have a collapsible-barrel standard zoom lens attached, just press the unlocking button about the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an act that creates the digital camera to switch on automatically. It is really an ingenious solution because you require to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes just over an additional - not write home about but nonetheless decent and entirely adequate.

You are able to frame your shots while using the rear screen - there is no electronic viewfinder as around the V1 model, an integral difference between the two. The LCD screen is usually a three-inch, 460,000-dot display that features wide viewing angles, great definition and accurate colours but only so-so visibility in strong daylight. We missed the EVF aided by the J1 alongside the V1, in bright sunlit conditions or with the 30-110mm telezoom lens as holding the camera approximately eye-level helped to stabilise the lens avoiding camera shake.

The control layout is quite peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 has a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks a lot of the shooting modes that are usually available on similar dials - particularly P, A, S and M - even though it has enough room to accommodate them. These modes are available on the J1 however, you should dive in to the rather long-winded rather than entirely logical menu to locate them. The J1’s mode dial only has four settings, Photo, Video, Motion Snapshot and Smart Photo Selector. The four-way controller also 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 is not a bad selection of functions, the belief that there is absolutely no ISO button will doubtlessly create a large amount of photographers thinking about purchasing the Nikon J1 being unhappy.

There’s a button within the rear labelled “F” but alas, this is not a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it allows you to quickly choose from the continuous shooting modes, when it’s in Video mode it permits you to toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There are 2 more vital controls for the back of the camera, including a scroll wheel round the four-way pad plus a rocker switch marked using a loupe icon. The scroll wheel can be used setting the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (when you’ve found them from the menu, that is certainly), even though the rocker switch controls the aperture. The reason why it provides a loupe icon near to it’s this control is employed to focus with an image to check on for critical concentrate Playback mode. Finally, there are four small buttons around the navigation pad, flush contrary to the rear panel of the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.

So what on earth are the type shooting modes within the mode dial exactly about? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked having a green camera icon, is to try and would want to be more often than not. With the mode dial set for this position, it is possible to pick your required exposure mode on the menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a great auto mode the location where the camera analyses the scene when in front of its lens and picks exactly what it thinks could be the right mode for that one scene. You may also make a choice with the conventional PASM modes, which give you full menu access plus the capacity to manually set the aperture, shutter speed, or both (Program AE Shift will come in P mode). ISO and white balance will also be manually selected, but only from your menu, as stated previously.

Of course there’s AWB and auto ISO likewise, using the latter to arrive three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) allowing you to specify how high you need your camera to search in the event the light gets low. You can also choose from three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, when the camera takes power over just what it focusses on (it’s not an incredible mode to get because your default because camera obviously can’t read your head and may give attention to something different than your actual subject); Single Point, in which you can make certainly one of 135 AF points first by hitting OK then moving the active AF point round the frame utilizing the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, where you pick your subject, press OK and enable you in order to that subject since it moves around, as long as it doesn’t leave the frame certainly.

The Nikon 1 J1 has an intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that mixes contrast- and phase-difference detection in a similar fashion because Fujifilm F300EXR did. This permits the Nikon 1 J1 to concentrate extremely quickly in good light, even using a moving subject. This company claims the Nikon 1 system cameras will be the fastest-focusing machines on the globe, this also matches our experience - so long as there’s enough light. When light levels drop, the camera switches to contrast-detect AF which, though faster than you are on most cameras, isn’t as quickly as one other method. It is usually your camera that decides which AF solution to use - an individual doesn’t have any influence on this.

Most of the time, the J1 will most likely only head for contrast detection when light levels are low. In good light, there we were able to take sharp photos of fast-moving subjects. The Nikon J1 certainly isn’t going to disappoint here. Manual focusing is also possible, even though the Nikon 1 lenses do not possess focus rings. If you want to focus manually, you firstly ought to hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK and utilize the scroll wheel to adjust focus. To work with you on this, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central area of the image and displays a rudimentary focus scale over the right side on the frame - but those include the only focusing helps you get. There’s no peaking function available as on some rival models.

The J1 has a electronic shutter (the V1 also has an analog shutter). It is absolutely silent (the target confirmation beep is usually disabled in the menu) and allows the use of shutter speeds as fast as 1/16,000th of any second and, using the Electronic Hi setting selected, lets you shoot full-resolution stills at 60 fps. Note however that although it is a major achievement, it’s limited by a buffer that will only hold 12 raw files. Additionally, the utilization of this mode precludes AF tracking - you should lower the frame rate to 10fps if you’d like that -, along with the viewfinder goes blank while the pictures are taken. The linksys e2000 application we can think of where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really be convenient is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. With this rate, a series of 5 bracketed shots could be taken in a lot less than 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 isn’t going to offer a real feature - in truth it does not offer autoexposure bracketing whatsoever.

Selling it to the recording mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. Above all, the digital camera is usually set to shoot Full HD footage, and you even reach choose from 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, based on whether you would like to assist progressive or interlaced video. If you can’t need Full HD, additionally, there is 720p @ 60fps, which can be really smooth and still counts as hi-def. Secondly, you obtain full manual treating exposure in video mode. It is an option; it’s not necessary to shoot in M mode however you can if that is what you require. Thirdly, you receive fast, continuous AF in video mode, and delay pills work well, particularly 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 - and also the massive processing power from the Nikon J1 - you’ll be able to take multiple full-resolution stills even while recording HD video. This works the other way round too - you are able to capture a motion picture 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 such a case the digital camera will invariably record the playback quality at 720p/60fps.

As well as being competent at shooting regular movies in HD quality, the Nikon 1 J1 may also shoot video at 400fps for slow-motion playback. The resolution is less plus 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 replayed 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 which happen straight away to see in real time. The Nikon J1 goes a step forward by providing a 1200fps video mode, though the resolution and overall quality is just too poor for that for being genuinely useful.

The third icon around the mode dial symbolizes Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows your camera to capture at the very least 20 photos in a single press in the shutter release, including some that have been taken before fully depressing the button. Your camera analyses the average person pictures from the series and discards 15 of those, keeping merely the five which it thinks would be better when it comes to sharpness and composition. This feature could be genuinely useful when photographing fast action and fleeting moments.

Finally, there is 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 which had happened before the button was fully depressed - as well as has a still photograph. The film along with the still image are residing in separate files even so the camera can combine them in to a single slow-motion clip with vocals. It’s fun but we’re not able to really envision people using this shooting mode often. (In case you look at the video on the computer, it is going to play back at normal speed, without sound, which means this mode is really only interesting in case you view the clip in-camera or hook the camera as much as 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 operates on a compact EN-EL20 battery to the V1 big brother, and is particularly consequently able to produce considerably less shots for a passing fancy charge, managing around 230, while it does help to generate the digital camera body small. The camera’s tripod socket is made of metal and is found in line together with the lens’ optical axis. This too means that changing batteries or cards isn’t feasible even though the J1 is installed on a tripod, as being the hinges in the battery/card compartment door are so close to the tripod mount.

So, how did we like using the Nikon 1 J1? On one hand, we liked it a lot. In good light, its auto-focus strategy is indeed faster than pretty much anything we’ve used to date, having the ability to track and lock focus on a selection of truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding lots of sharp images in situations where our keeper rates have never been extremely 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 its modest guide number might suggest, using the clever design minimising red-eye.

However, the Nikon J1 has its share of frustrating idiosyncrasies applying the person interface that forces you to dive in the menu gain access to functions as easy as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons to some finished product, they are able to no less than make “F” button customisable by using a firmware update. Also, to find out a devoted button for exposure compensation - the positive thing - I did not find a way to activate a live histogram, although it would have made exposure compensation a lot more useful and simple to make use of. Again, this will more likely fixed in firmware.

We also missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, particularly in bright light or aided by 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, as opposed to the more proactive sensor cleaning unit the V1 offers, as well as the smaller battery implies that you should buy another you to definitely arrive at the day’s heavy shooting. The lack of an accessory port ensures that almost not one of the Nikon 1 accessories are appropriate for the J1, including the external flash and GPS unit.

One more thing we didn’t like could be that the camera would always show the picture just taken for a few seconds onscreen, therefore we did not be capable of turn this instant postview function completely off (although you can at any rate cancel it by way of a half-press in the shutter release). Finally, even though the camera is mostly fast and responsive, the camera takes excessively long to arise from sleep mode if this is idle for some time, contributing to many missed shots.

In fact, the Nikon 1 J1 is really a small, and compact, high-performance system camera that they like its your government can use a couple of tweaks to its graphical user interface to raised suit the needs of serious amateurs. The intended marketplace of casual users will cherish it because of its sheer speed, built-in flash, lightweight plus the fun features it offers. Why don’t we now discover how the Nikon 1 J1 fared in the image quality department.