Report on Nikon 1 J1: Innovative Nikon Mirroless Dslr cameras
The Nikon 1 J1 is really a stylish compact system camera having a 10-megapixel “CX” format sensor along with 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 now offers more conventional shooting modes like Programmed Auto, Aperture and Shutter Priority, along with Metered Manual. Also fully briefed is a built-in pop-up flash which has a guide amount of 5, a 3 inch rear display as well as an electronic shutter. Charging $649.95 / 549.99 which has a 10-30mm zoom lens, $699.95 / 599.99 with a 10mm pancake lens, or $799.95 / 699.99 inside a double-lens kit with all 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 certainly caused by made from aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts and is also therefore heavier than you would think according to its size alone, weighing 234g for your body only. Furthermore, it feels better quality as opposed to official product shots maybe have you believe. With an essentially grip-less design, the Nikon J1 is quite much a two-handed affair that really needs you to definitely hold the camera’s weight inside left hand, clutching the lens, and use your right hand for balance and operating the controls. A great a very important thing because it can make you pay attention to holding the camera properly, which inturn goes quite a distance 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 As an alternative to to be a scaled-down version on the out of date F mount, it’s really a brand spanking new design that delivers 100% electronic communication relating to the attached lens along with the camera body, from endless weeks of frustration contacts. Exactly like within the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, there’s a white dot for convenient lens alignment, although it has moved from the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) to the peak on the mount. The lenses themselves use a short silver ridge within the lens barrel, which must be in alignment with said dot to ensure you to definitely manage to attach the lens for the camera. Even if this might require a little bit of adjusting to, this process makes changing lenses quicker and simpler.
Without lens attached, you will see the sensor sitting right 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 twice the surface of the biggest imagers used in compact and bridge cameras like the Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, only most of the spot of the standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip has a 1.36x longer diagonal versus the Nikon CX imager. Considering the fact that Four Thirds carries a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” breaks down to to about 2.72, meaning that a 10mm lens has approximately the identical angle of view being a 27.2mm lens while on 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 regards to its angle-of-view range.
All of those other Nikon J1’s faceplate is practically empty, featuring only the lens release, a receiver to the optional ML-L3 infrared remote control, two narrow slits to the microphone each side of the lens, along with an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There isn’t any grip by any means for the front on the Nikon 1 J1.
There’s 2 means of powering within the Nikon 1 J1 and Nikon 1 V1. You may either utilize the on/off button sitting near the shutter release or, in case you have a collapsible-barrel zoom lens attached, you can easily press the unlocking button around the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an action that triggers you to change on automatically. It becomes an ingenious solution since you need to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes about another - not even attempt to write home about however decent and entirely adequate.
You may frame your shots using the rear screen - there isn’t any electronic viewfinder as on the V1 model, a key distinction between the two. The LCD screen is 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 all the 30-110mm telezoom lens as holding your camera approximately eye-level helped to stabilise the lens and steer clear of camera shake.
The control layout is pretty peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 carries a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks many of the shooting modes which might be usually found on similar dials - such as P, A, S and M - though it has enough room to accommodate them. These modes can be found about the J1 and you should dive into the rather long-winded and never entirely logical menu to get them. The J1’s mode dial only 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. Even if this is not a bad collection of functions, the fact that there is absolutely no ISO button will doubtlessly cause a great deal of photographers interested in buying the Nikon J1 to become unhappy.
You will find there’s button on the rear labelled “F” but alas, this is not a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it permits you to quickly pick from the continuous shooting modes, when it’s in Video mode it helps you to toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There’s two more significant controls about the back of the camera, together with a scroll wheel around the four-way pad and also a rocker switch marked which has a loupe icon. The scroll wheel is utilized to create the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (when you’ve found them inside the menu, that is certainly), as the rocker switch controls the aperture. The reason it offers a loupe icon close to it is that it control is utilized to focus while on an image to evaluate for critical concentrate Playback mode. Last but not least, there are four small buttons around the navigation pad, flush up against the rear panel in the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.
So what are the types shooting modes on the mode dial all about? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked using a green camera icon, is to try and will want to be usually. Using the mode dial set to this position, you’ll be able to pick your desired exposure mode in the menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a smart auto mode when the camera analyses the scene before its lens and picks just what it thinks could be the right mode for that one scene. You can even select one in the conventional PASM modes, which supply you with full menu access along with the chance to manually set the aperture, shutter speed, or both (Program AE Shift will come in P mode). ISO and white balance may also be manually selected, but only from your menu, as already mentioned.
Of course there’s AWB and auto ISO also, with all the latter coming in three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) enabling you to specify how high you wish your camera to search in the event the light gets low. It’s also possible to pick from three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, where the camera takes power over just what it focusses on (this is simply not an incredible mode to have because your default because camera obviously can’t read your head and could target something more important than your actual subject); Single Point, the place you can make considered one of 135 AF points by first hitting OK and after that moving the active AF point round the frame using the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, that you pick your subject, press OK and permit the digital camera in order to that subject because it moves around, provided that it does not leave the frame obviously.
The Nikon 1 J1 has a intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that combines contrast- and phase-difference detection in a similar way as being the Fujifilm F300EXR did. This enables the Nikon 1 J1 to concentrate extremely quickly in good light, even on the moving subject. This company claims the Nikon 1 system cameras are definitely the fastest-focusing machines in the world, which 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 on most cameras, isn’t as soon as the other method. It is usually your camera that decides which AF strategy to use - an individual has no affect this.
Normally, the J1 will usually only head for contrast detection when light levels are low. In good light, we had been able to take sharp photos of fast-moving subjects. The Nikon J1 certainly isn’t going to disappoint here. Manual focusing is additionally possible, even though Nikon 1 lenses would not have focus rings. If you wish to focus manually, you first of all ought to hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK then utilize scroll wheel to adjust focus. To help you out on this, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central part of the image and displays a rudimentary focus scale on the right side in the frame - but those would be the only focusing helps you get. There is no peaking function available as on some rival models.
The J1 has a electronic shutter (the V1 also offers a mechanical shutter). It is absolutely silent (the main focus confirmation beep may be disabled in the menu) and allows using shutter speeds you wish 1/16,000th of a second and, together with the Electronic Hi setting selected, lets you shoot full-resolution stills at 60 frames per second. Note however that while this is the major achievement, it’s limited by a buffer that may only hold 12 raw files. Additionally, the usage of this mode precludes AF tracking - you should lower the frame rate to 10fps if you want that -, as well as the viewfinder goes blank as the pictures are taken. Single thing that it application we can imagine where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really come in useful is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. With this rate, a few 5 bracketed shots could be drawn in lower than 0.1 second, rendering small movements that will otherwise pose alignment problems - like leaves being blown inside wind - a non-issue. Alas, the Nikon J1 isn’t going to offer this type of feature - actually it won’t offer autoexposure bracketing by any means.
Selling it to the recording mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. Above all, your camera can be set to shoot Full HD footage, therefore you even arrive at choose from 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, depending on whether you would like to work together with progressive or interlaced video. If you do not need Full HD, there’s also 720p @ 60fps, which can be really smooth nevertheless counts as hd. Secondly, you receive full manual treatments for exposure in video mode. It is really an option; it’s not necessary to shoot in M mode nevertheless, you can if that is what exactly you need. Thirdly, you will get fast, continuous AF in video mode, and it works well, specially 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 - in addition to the massive processing power in the Nikon J1 - it is possible to take multiple full-resolution stills whilst recording HD video. This works the opposite way round too - you are able to capture your favorite shows clip even if the mode dial influences Still Image position, by simply pressing the red movie shutter release. We’ve found that in such cases the digital camera will record it at 720p/60fps.
In addition to being able to shooting regular movies in HD quality, the Nikon 1 J1 may also shoot video at 400fps for slow-motion playback. The resolution is leaner plus the aspect ratio is undoubtedly an ultra-widescreen 2.67:1, but the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo etc. These videos are played back at 30fps, which can be over 13x slower compared to capture speed of 400fps, letting you get creative and show the world several interesting phenomena which happen too quickly to see instantly. The Nikon J1 goes even further by giving a 1200fps video mode, nevertheless the resolution and overall quality is simply too poor to the to get genuinely useful.
Another icon within the mode dial means Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows your camera to capture at least 20 photos for a single press in the shutter release, including some that were taken before fully depressing the button. Your camera analyses the consumer pictures from the series and discards 15 of those, keeping just the five which it thinks should be in terms of sharpness and composition. This feature can be genuinely useful when photographing fast action and fleeting moments.
Finally, you will find there’s so-called Motion Snapshot mode when the camera records a quick high-definition movie - whose buffering starts in a half-press in the shutter release, so again includes events which had happened prior to button was fully depressed - and as well uses a still photograph. The film along with the still image are trapped in separate files even so the camera can combine them in to a single slow-motion clip with background music. It’s fun but we’re not able to really envision people employing this shooting mode all the time. (Should you view the video on the computer, it will play back at normal speed, without sound, and this mode is actually only interesting if you comprehend the clip in-camera or hook the digital camera as much as an HDTV with an HDMI cable.)
The Nikon J1 stores photos and videos on SD/SDHC/SDXC memory cards, and props up fastest UHS-I speed class. Your camera runs on an inferior EN-EL20 battery to its V1 your government, and is particularly consequently able to produce much less shots for a passing fancy charge, managing around 230, even though it helps to generate you body small. The camera’s tripod socket is manufactured out of metal and is positioned in line with the lens’ optical axis. This also signifies that changing batteries or cards isn’t likely even though the J1 is installed on a tripod, because the hinges from the battery/card compartment door are so close to the tripod mount.
So, how did we love to while using the Nikon 1 J1? On one side, we liked it a whole lot. In good light, its auto-focus technique is indeed faster than virtually anything we’ve used to date, to be able to track and lock concentrate on an array of truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding plenty 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 it is modest guide number might suggest, using the clever design minimising red-eye.
However, the Nikon J1 does have it’s share of frustrating idiosyncrasies applying the consumer interface that forces you to dive into the menu to reach functions as easy as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons to some finished product, they might at the least increase the risk for “F” button customisable by way of a firmware update. Also, while there is an avid button for exposure compensation - which is a advantage - I didnrrrt find a way to activate an active histogram, though it might have made exposure compensation considerably more useful and straightforward to use. Again, this might more likely fixed in firmware.
We missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, particularly in bright light or aided by the telephoto lens which doesn’t lend itself well to being held out at arms length. The J1 has only a glass dust shield as it is defense against unwanted debris, rather than the more proactive sensor cleaning unit that the V1 offers, and the smaller battery ensures that you’ll want to buy another one to arrive at the day’s heavy shooting. Lacking an accessory port means that almost no Nikon 1 accessories are appropriate for the J1, like the external flash and GPS unit.
Something more important we failed to like could be that the camera would always show the photo just taken for a couple seconds onscreen, and that we failed to try to turn this instant postview function completely off (even if you can at least cancel it using a half-press from the shutter release). Finally, while the camera is often fast and responsive, your camera takes way too long to arise from sleep mode when it is idle for some time, causing quite a few missed shots.
All things considered, the Nikon 1 J1 is really a smaller than average compact, high-performance system camera that like its your government might use several tweaks to the gui to increase suit the needs of serious amateurs. The intended audience of casual users will like it due to the sheer speed, built-in flash, compact size and the fun features it gives you. Let us now observe 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