Free article Directory Z DepotFree article directory for a variety of articles & free content

The Nikon 1 J1 is usually a stylish compact system camera featuring a 10-megapixel “CX” format sensor and the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Boasting continuous shooting speeds all the way to 60 frames per second 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, together with Metered Manual. Also fully briefed can be a built-in pop-up flash that has a guide amount of 5, a 3 inch rear display and an electronic shutter. Charging $649.95 / 549.99 with a 10-30mm contact lens, $699.95 / 599.99 having a 10mm pancake lens, or $799.95 / 699.99 in a very double-lens kit with the 10-30mm and 30-110mm zoom lenses, the Nikon 1 J1 is scheduled to be on sale later this month.

The Nikon 1 J1 is generally 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 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 can be quite much a two-handed affair that really needs you to hold the camera’s weight inside left-hand, clutching the lens, and use your right hand for balance and operating the controls. This is actually an excellent mainly because it makes you focus on holding your camera properly, which inturn goes far towards avoiding shake-induced blur as part of your photos.

The camera’s clean, minimalist front plate is dominated by the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Rather than as a scaled-down version of the ancient F mount, it is just a brand spanking new design that gives 100% electronic communication involving the attached lens and the camera body, from 12 contacts. The same as on the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, there exists a white dot for convenient lens alignment, eventhough it has moved in the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) to the peak of the mount. The lenses themselves feature a short silver ridge for the lens barrel, which must be in alignment with said dot to enable one to be able to attach the lens to your camera. Of course this may need a bit of becoming familiar with, it really makes changing lenses quicker and easier.

Without any lens attached, you will see the sensor sitting right behind the plane in 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 utilised in compact and bridge cameras such as the Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, but only most the area of your standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip incorporates a 1.36x longer diagonal compared to the Nikon CX imager. Considering that Four Thirds includes a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” works out to around 2.72, which means a 10mm lens has approximately exactly the same angle of view like a 27.2mm lens on 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 remainder of the Nikon J1’s faceplate is practically empty, featuring exactly the lens release, a receiver for the optional ML-L3 infrared handheld control, two narrow slits for the microphone each side from the lens, as well as an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There isn’t any grip by any means for the front in the Nikon 1 J1.

There’s two strategies to powering within the Nikon 1 J1. You may use the on/off button sitting next to the shutter release or, when you have a collapsible-barrel contact attached, you can simply press the unlocking button within the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an act that creates the camera to interchange on automatically. It is really an ingenious solution since you need to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes approximately another - not write home about but still decent and entirely adequate.

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

The control layout is reasonably peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 incorporates a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks most of the shooting modes that happen to be usually situated on similar dials - that include P, A, S and M - eventhough it has enough room to allow for them. These modes can be obtained about the J1 nevertheless, you should dive into your rather long-winded and never entirely logical menu to discover them. The J1’s mode dial merely has four settings, Photo, Video, Motion Snapshot and Smart Photo Selector. The four-way controller also has four functions mapped onto its Up, Right, Down and Left buttons; including AE/AF-Lock, exposure compensation, flash mode and self-timer, respectively. Even though this is not a bad range of functions, the belief that there is absolutely no ISO button will doubtlessly produce a large amount of photographers thinking about purchasing Nikon J1 being unhappy.

You will find there’s button about the rear labelled “F” but alas, this is simply not a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it allows you to quickly make a choice from the continuous shooting modes, whilst in Video mode it helps you to toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There are two more important controls within the back on the camera, including a scroll wheel round the four-way pad and a rocker switch marked with a loupe icon. The scroll wheel is used to put the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (once you’ve found them in the menu, which is), whilst the rocker switch controls the aperture. The reason it offers a loupe icon next to it can be that control is used to zoom in with an image to evaluate for critical focus in Playback mode. Lastly, you’ll find four small buttons about the navigation pad, flush contrary to the rear panel from the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.

Precisely what are those shooting modes within the mode dial all about? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked having a green camera icon, is where you would want to be more often than not. Together with the mode dial set to this position, you are able to pick your required exposure mode on the menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a brilliant auto mode the location where the camera analyses the scene looking at its lens and picks just what it thinks would be the right mode for that specific scene. You can also choose one in the conventional PASM modes, which offer you full menu access as well as the capacity to manually set the aperture, shutter speed, or both (Program AE Shift comes in P mode). ISO and white balance can also be manually selected, but only from the menu, as mentioned previously.

Obviously there’s AWB and auto ISO also, together with the latter coming in three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) permitting you to specify how high you desire the camera to look if your light gets low. You can also select three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, when the camera takes management of just what it focusses on (this is not an excellent mode to have since your default because camera obviously can’t read your mind and may concentrate on something more important than your actual subject); Single Point, where you can decide one of 135 AF points frist by hitting OK and then moving the active AF point throughout the frame while using the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, in places you pick your subject, press OK and let the digital camera in order to that subject since it moves around, provided that it doesn’t leave the frame obviously.

The Nikon 1 J1 comes with a intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that mixes contrast- and phase-difference detection likewise because Fujifilm F300EXR did. This allows the Nikon 1 J1 to target extremely quickly in good light, even over a moving subject. The corporation claims the Nikon 1 system cameras will be the fastest-focusing machines on earth, and this also matches our experience - providing there’s enough light. When light levels drop, your camera switches to contrast-detect AF which, though faster than on most cameras, isn’t you wish one other method. It is usually you that decides which AF technique to use - the person doesn’t have any influence on this.

In most cases, the J1 will often only use contrast detection when light levels are low. In good light, there we were capable of taking sharp photos of fast-moving subjects. The Nikon J1 certainly won’t disappoint here. Manual focusing is also possible, although the Nikon 1 lenses do not possess focus rings. If you would like focus manually, first you ought to hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK and utilize the scroll wheel to regulate focus. To work with you with this, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central portion of the image and displays a rudimentary focus scale down the right side of the frame - but those are the only focusing aids you get. There is not any peaking function available as on some rival models.

The J1 has a electronic shutter (the V1 even offers an analog shutter). It’s absolutely silent (the target confirmation beep is usually disabled through the menu) and allows the usage of shutter speeds you’d like 1/16,000th of the second and, with all the Electronic Hi setting selected, enables you to shoot full-resolution stills at 60 frames per second. Note however that although this can be a major achievement, it’s restricted to 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 wish that -, as well as the viewfinder goes blank while the pictures are being taken. One application we could think about where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really come in handy is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. When it reaches this rate, a series of 5 bracketed shots might be used below 0.1 second, rendering small movements that could otherwise pose alignment problems - like leaves being blown inside wind - a non-issue. Alas, the Nikon J1 won’t offer a real feature - in reality it does not offer autoexposure bracketing whatsoever.

Moving on to it mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. First and foremost, the camera could be set to shoot Full HD footage, and you even be able to select from 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, determined by whether you prefer to work with progressive or interlaced video. If you don’t need Full HD, in addition there are 720p @ 60fps, that’s really smooth nevertheless counts as hi-def. Secondly, you will get full manual treating exposure in video mode. This is an option; you don’t have to shoot in M mode however, you can if that’s things you need. Thirdly, you get fast, continuous AF in video mode, and delay pills work well, especially in good light. Movies are compressed while using H.264 codec and stored as MOV files. You will find separate shutter release buttons for stills and video, and because of this - and also the massive processing power in the Nikon J1 - it is possible to take multiple full-resolution stills even when recording HD video. This works the opposite too - you’ll be able to capture your favorite shows clip regardless if the mode dial is incorporated in the Still Image position, simply by pressing the red movie shutter release. We’ve found out that in this case you will usually record the recording at 720p/60fps.

In addition to being 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 along with the aspect ratio can be an ultra-widescreen 2.67:1, even so the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo and the like. These videos are replayed at 30fps, which can be greater than 13x slower than the capture speed of 400fps, enabling you to get creative and display to the world several interesting phenomena that happen too soon to see in real time. The Nikon J1 goes further by providing a 1200fps video mode, but the resolution and overall quality is just too poor for the for being genuinely useful.

Your third icon around the mode dial stands for Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows you to capture at the very least 20 photos at a single press of the shutter release, including some that had been taken before fully depressing the button. The camera analyses the person pictures within the series and discards 15 of them, keeping the five it thinks should be regarding sharpness and composition. This feature can be genuinely useful when photographing fast action and fleeting moments.

Finally, we have a so-called Motion Snapshot mode when the camera records a quick high-definition movie - whose buffering starts at the half-press on the shutter release, so again includes events which had happened prior to button was fully depressed - as well as has a still photograph. The film and the still image are stored in separate files but the camera can combine them right into a single slow-motion clip with background music. It’s fun but we can’t really envision people making use of this shooting mode often. (When you observe the video on the computer, it’s going to play back at normal speed, without sound, this mode is absolutely only interesting if you observe the clip in-camera or hook the digital camera approximately an HDTV via an HDMI cable.)

The Nikon J1 stores pics and vids on SD/SDHC/SDXC memory cards, and props up fastest UHS-I speed class. You operates on a reduced EN-EL20 battery to its V1 big brother, and is consequently capable of producing considerably less shots for a passing fancy charge, managing around 230, while it does help for making your camera body smaller sized. The camera’s tripod socket consists of metal and is situated line while using lens’ optical axis. This actually also ensures that changing batteries or cards isn’t likely as the J1 is attached with a tripod, because the hinges in the battery/card compartment door are extremely near to 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 technique is indeed faster than pretty much anything we’ve used thus far, to be able to track and lock consentrate on numerous truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding many sharp images in situations where our keeper rates haven’t ever been very good. Additionally, its high-speed continuous shooting modes have allowed us to capture interesting moments that we’d have surely missed as we had used a slower camera. The built-in pop-up flash proved more useful that its modest guide number might suggest, with all the clever design minimising red-eye.

Conversely, the Nikon J1 has its own share of frustrating idiosyncrasies starting with an individual interface that makes you dive in the menu to gain access to functions as basic as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons to a finished product, they might at the least make the “F” button customisable via a firmware update. Also, while there is an avid button for exposure compensation - the industry good thing - I didnrrrt find a way to activate an active histogram, although it could have made exposure compensation a lot more useful and straightforward to make use of. Again, this will apt to be fixed in firmware.

We also missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, especially in bright light or aided by the telephoto lens which does not lend itself well to being held out at arms length. The J1 has only a glass dust shield since it is defense against unwanted debris, as opposed to the more proactive sensor cleaning unit the V1 offers, and the smaller battery shows that you will need to buy another that you get through a day’s heavy shooting. The possible lack of an accessory port signifies that almost no Nikon 1 accessories are that will work with the J1, like the external flash and GPS unit.

Another thing we wouldn’t like was that the camera would always show the photo just taken a couple of seconds onscreen, therefore we didn’t be capable of turn this instant postview function completely off (even if you can at any rate cancel it by way of a half-press from the shutter release). Finally, whilst the camera is generally fast and responsive, the digital camera takes far too long to wake up from sleep mode if it has become idle for a short time, causing several missed shots.

With that said, the Nikon 1 J1 is a small, and compact, high-performance system camera they like its big brother might use some tweaks to its user interface to better suit the requirements serious amateurs. The intended marketplace of casual users will cherish it for the sheer speed, built-in flash, compact size as well as the fun features it gives you. Let us now observe the Nikon 1 J1 fared inside image quality department.