Article on Nikon 1 J1: Latest Nikon Mirroless Dslr cameras
The Nikon 1 J1 is usually a stylish compact system camera having a 10-megapixel “CX” format sensor plus 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 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 aboard is 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, $699.95 / 599.99 having 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 take a sale later this month.
The Nikon 1 J1 is mostly constructed from aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts which is therefore heavier than you would think dependant on its size alone, weighing 234g for the body only. What’s more, it feels higher quality compared to the official product shots would have you believe. Having an essentially grip-less design, the Nikon J1 is extremely much a two-handed affair that needs you to retain the camera’s weight inside the left-hand, clutching the lens, and employ your right hand for balance and operating the controls. A great an excellent mainly because it forces you to pay attention to holding the camera properly, which inturn 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 good old F mount, it’s a brand-new design that provides 100% electronic communication between your attached lens and also the camera body, courtesy of several contacts. Exactly like on the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, there is a white dot for straightforward lens alignment, even though it has moved from the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) up on the mount. The lenses themselves use a short silver ridge about the lens barrel, which needs to be in alignment with said dot in order for you to manage to attach the lens to your camera. Even though this might need some adjusting to, this process makes changing lenses quicker and simpler.
Without lens attached, you will see the sensor sitting directly behind the plane on the bayonet mount. Such as mount itself, the sensor is brand new. Measuring 13.2×8.8mm this “CX” format imaging chip has double the surface area of the largest imagers found in compact and bridge cameras just like 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 as opposed to Nikon CX imager. Given that Four Thirds features a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” breaks down to to around 2.72, and thus a 10mm lens has approximately the identical angle of view being a 27.2mm lens upon an FX or 35mm film camera. The Nikon 1 Nikkor 10-30mm standard zoom is thus equal to a 27.2-81.6mm (or, practically speaking, 28-80mm) FX lens with regard to its angle-of-view range.
The other Nikon J1’s faceplate is virtually empty, featuring only the lens release, a receiver for that optional ML-L3 infrared remote device, two narrow slits to the microphone spare on both on the lens, and an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There’s no grip whatsoever within the front in the Nikon 1 J1.
There’s 2 strategies to powering for the Nikon 1 J1. You may utilize the on/off button sitting next to the shutter release or, for those who 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 action that creates the digital 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 - not even attempt to write home about but nonetheless decent and entirely adequate.
You may frame your shots while using rear screen - there is absolutely no electronic viewfinder as within the V1 model, an important distinction between the 2 main. The LCD screen is usually 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 when using the J1 alongside the V1, in bright sunlit conditions or with the 30-110mm telezoom lens as holding your camera approximately eye-level helped to stabilise the lens and avoid camera shake.
The control layout is pretty peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 carries a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks a lot of the shooting modes which are usually entirely on similar dials - particularly P, A, S and M - eventhough it has enough room to fit them. These modes can be found on the J1 but you must dive into the rather long-winded but not entirely logical menu to find them. The J1’s mode dial merely has 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. Although this isn’t a bad number of functions, the fact that there isn’t a ISO button will doubtlessly create a wide range of photographers enthusiastic about buying the Nikon J1 to be unhappy.
You will find there’s button for 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, when it is in Video mode it permits you to toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There are 2 more significant controls about the back on the camera, including a scroll wheel across the four-way pad and also a rocker switch marked that has a loupe icon. The scroll wheel is utilized to create the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (once you have found them within the menu, that may be), as the rocker switch controls the aperture. The reason it’s got a loupe icon next to it is that it control is used to focus with an image to check on for critical focus in Playback mode. As a final point, you will find four small buttons round the navigation pad, flush resistant to the rear panel on the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.
So what are shooting modes about the mode dial information about? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked that has a green camera icon, is to will want to be most of the time. Together with the mode dial set to the position, you are able to pick your required exposure mode through the menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a smart auto mode the place that the camera analyses the scene when in front of its lens and picks what it really thinks could be the right way of that exact scene. You can also find out in the conventional PASM modes, which provide you with full menu access as well as the chance to manually set the aperture, shutter speed, or both (Program AE Shift can be purchased in P mode). ISO and white balance can be manually selected, but only in the menu, as already mentioned.
Obviously there’s AWB and auto ISO also, with all the latter being released in three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) helping you to specify how high you want the digital camera to look when the light gets low. You can also choose between three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, the location where the camera takes management of exactly what focusses on (this isn’t a great mode to obtain when your default because the camera obviously can’t read your brain and could give attention to something different than your actual subject); Single Point, in which you can pick certainly one of 135 AF points starting with hitting OK and moving the active AF point about the frame using the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, that you pick your subject, press OK and invite the digital camera to trace that subject as it moves around, as long as this doesn’t happen leave the frame naturally.
The Nikon 1 J1 comes with a intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that mixes contrast- and phase-difference detection in a similar fashion because Fujifilm F300EXR did. This gives the Nikon 1 J1 to focus extremely quickly in good light, even using a moving subject. The organization claims the Nikon 1 system cameras are definitely the fastest-focusing machines in the world, which matches our experience - given that 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 soon as the other method. It certainly is the digital camera that decides which AF approach to use - the person doesn’t have affect on this.
In most cases, the J1 will most likely only resort to contrast detection when light levels are low. In good light, i was capable of taking sharp photos of fast-moving subjects. The Nikon J1 certainly won’t disappoint here. Manual focusing can be possible, even though the Nikon 1 lenses will not have focus rings. If you wish to focus manually, first you have to 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 section of the image and displays a rudimentary focus scale over the right side of the frame - but those will be the only focusing helps you get. There’s no peaking function available as on some rival models.
The J1 comes with an electronic shutter (the V1 even offers an analog shutter). Itrrrs very silent (the target confirmation beep might be disabled from the menu) and allows the utilization of shutter speeds you wish 1/16,000th of the second and, using the Electronic Hi setting selected, enables you to shoot full-resolution stills at 60 fps. Note however that although that is a major achievement, it’s restricted by a buffer that will only hold 12 raw files. Additionally, the application of this mode precludes AF tracking - you need to lower the frame rate to 10fps if you’d like that -, as well as the viewfinder goes blank as you move the pictures are now being taken. Single thing that it application you can visualize where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really be useful is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. As of this rate, several 5 bracketed shots may be taken in below 0.1 second, rendering small movements which could otherwise pose alignment problems - like leaves being blown inside wind - a non-issue. Alas, the Nikon J1 doesn’t offer this kind of feature - the truth is this doesn’t offer autoexposure bracketing at all.
Trying film mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. First and foremost, you might be set to shoot Full HD footage, and you even get to select 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, determined by whether you’d like to use progressive or interlaced video. If you do not need Full HD, additionally, there are 720p @ 60fps, which is really smooth but still counts as hi-d. Secondly, you will get full manual treating exposure in video mode. It becomes an option; you don’t need to shoot in M mode however you can if that’s what exactly you need. Thirdly, you get fast, continuous AF in video mode, and it works well, specifically in good light. Movies are compressed while using H.264 codec and stored as MOV files. You will discover separate shutter release buttons for stills and video, and due to this - and also the massive processing power of the Nikon J1 - you can take multiple full-resolution stills whilst recording HD video. This works vice versa too - you can capture a film clip even if the mode dial influences Still Image position, by just pressing the red movie shutter release. We’ve found that in this instance the camera will forever record the playback quality at 720p/60fps.
Not only is it capable of shooting regular movies in HD quality, the Nikon 1 J1 may shoot video at 400fps for slow-motion playback. The resolution is gloomier and the aspect ratio is an ultra-widescreen 2.67:1, nevertheless the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo and so on. These videos are replayed at 30fps, and that is over 13x slower versus the capture speed of 400fps, permitting you to get creative and display to the world numerous interesting phenomena which happen prematurely to see instantly. The Nikon J1 goes even more by giving a 1200fps video mode, nevertheless the resolution and overall quality is just too big poor for your for being genuinely useful.
The third icon around the mode dial is short for Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows the digital camera to capture at least 20 photos at a single press in the shutter release, including some which were taken before fully depressing the button. You analyses the average person pictures inside the series and discards 15 of them, keeping only the five who’s thinks might be best in terms of sharpness and composition. This feature could be genuinely useful when photographing fast action and fleeting moments.
Finally, there exists a so-called Motion Snapshot mode in which the camera records a brief high-definition movie - whose buffering starts at a half-press of the shutter release, so again includes events which in fact had happened prior to a button was fully depressed - and as well needs a still photograph. The movie as well as the still image are saved in separate files nevertheless 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 frequently. (In the event you view the video using a computer, it’ll play back at normal speed, without sound, and this mode is really only interesting if you observe the clip in-camera or hook the camera approximately an HDTV through an HDMI cable.)
The Nikon J1 stores photos and videos on SD/SDHC/SDXC memory cards, and props up the fastest UHS-I speed class. Your camera runs on a smaller EN-EL20 battery to the V1 our government, and is consequently capable of producing much less shots on one charge, managing around 230, while it helps to produce your camera body small. The camera’s tripod socket is made from metal which is situated line while using lens’ optical axis. This too ensures that changing batteries or cards is not possible while the J1 is mounted on a tripod, since the hinges on the battery/card compartment door are way too towards the tripod mount.
So, how did we love to using the Nikon 1 J1? On one side, we liked it a great deal. In good light, its auto-focus product is indeed faster than just about anything we’ve used thus far, to be able to track and lock target a variety of truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding lots of sharp images in situations where our keeper rates haven’t been quite high. Additionally, its high-speed continuous shooting modes have allowed us to capture interesting moments that we’d have surely missed whenever we had used a slower camera. The built-in pop-up flash proved more useful what has modest guide number might suggest, with the clever design minimising red-eye.
Alternatively, the Nikon J1 have their own share of frustrating idiosyncrasies you start with anyone interface that can make you dive into your menu to access functions as common as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons to a finished product, they could no less than have the “F” button customisable with a firmware update. Also, you will find a dedicated button for exposure compensation - that is a positive thing - I didnrrrt find a way to activate a live histogram, even though it could have made exposure compensation considerably more useful and easy make use of. Again, this could more likely fixed in firmware.
We missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, particularly in bright light or when using 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, rather than the more proactive sensor cleaning unit that this V1 offers, and also the smaller battery signifies that you’ll want to buy a supplementary someone to arrive at the day’s heavy shooting. The possible lack of an accessory port means that almost not one of the Nikon 1 accessories are appropriate for the J1, for example the external flash and GPS unit.
Another thing we would not like could be that the camera would always show the photo just taken for some seconds onscreen, therefore we would not are able to turn this instant postview function completely off (although you can at least cancel it using a half-press with the shutter release). Finally, as you move the camera is mostly fast and responsive, the camera takes much too long to wake from sleep mode if this has been idle for a short time, leading to numerous missed shots.
All things considered, the Nikon 1 J1 can be a smaller than average compact, high-performance system camera that like its larger might use several tweaks to its graphical user interface to raised suit the requirements of serious amateurs. The intended target market of casual users will cherish it for the sheer speed, built-in flash, lightweight and also the fun features there is. We will now see how the Nikon 1 J1 fared from the image quality department.