Article Directory Drop The RazorWe’re simply changing the way article directories are managed. We are creating a strong, integrity-based community of respected and successful article…

The Nikon 1 J1 can be a stylish compact system camera having a 10-megapixel “CX” format sensor as well as 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 and a unique Motion Snapshot Mode, the portable Nikon J1 offers more conventional shooting modes like Programmed Auto, Aperture and Shutter Priority, as well as Metered Manual. Also up to speed is often a built-in pop-up flash using a guide variety of 5, a 3 inch rear display along with an electronic shutter. Costing $649.95 / 549.99 using a 10-30mm contact lens, $699.95 / 599.99 having a 10mm pancake lens, or $799.95 / 699.99 in the double-lens kit using 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 mainly constructed from aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts and is particularly therefore heavier than what you know already depending on its size alone, weighing 234g with the body only. It also feels better made compared to the official product shots maybe have you believe. With the essentially grip-less design, the Nikon J1 is very much a two-handed affair that really needs that you secure the camera’s weight inside left-hand, clutching the lens, and use your right hand for balance and operating the controls. This is really an excellent mainly because it pushes you to look closely at holding you properly, which goes further 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. Instead of being a scaled-down version with the classic F mount, it is just a new design that delivers 100% electronic communication relating to the attached lens along with the camera body, thanks to endless weeks of frustration contacts. Much like on the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, there exists a white dot for easy lens alignment, though it has moved on the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) to the peak with the mount. The lenses themselves include a short silver ridge around the lens barrel, which should be in alignment with said dot to ensure that that you have the capacity to attach the lens towards the camera. Of course this may require some adjusting to, it actually makes changing lenses quicker and easier.

Without lens attached, you can see the sensor sitting right behind the plane with the bayonet mount. Much like the mount itself, the sensor is fresh. Measuring 13.2×8.8mm this “CX” format imaging chip has twice the surface area of the most popular imagers utilized in compact and bridge cameras much like the Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, only most the location of any standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip features a 1.36x longer diagonal versus the Nikon CX imager. Provided that Four Thirds incorporates a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” computes to about 2.72, and therefore a 10mm lens has approximately exactly the same angle of view like a 27.2mm lens upon 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 with regards to its angle-of-view range.

The rest of the Nikon J1’s faceplate is practically empty, featuring the lens release, a receiver for the optional ML-L3 infrared handy remote control, two narrow slits to the microphone spare on both in the lens, and an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There is no grip by any means within the front in the Nikon 1 J1.

There are two ways of powering around the Nikon1 J1. You may either use the on/off button sitting next to the shutter release or, should you have a collapsible-barrel contact attached, you can simply press the unlocking button for the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an act that produces the camera to interchange on automatically. This is an ingenious solution because you require to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes about an additional - absolutely nothing to write home about but still decent and entirely adequate.

It is possible to frame your shots with all the rear screen - there isn’t any electronic viewfinder as on the V1 model, a vital distinction between both the. The LCD screen is really 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 when using the J1 alongside the V1, in a choice of bright sunlit conditions or with all the 30-110mm telezoom lens as holding your camera around eye-level helped to stabilise the lens and get away from camera shake.

The control layout is pretty peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 includes a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks almost all of the shooting modes that are usually available on similar dials - such as P, A, S and M - community . has enough room to fit them. These modes can be purchased about the J1 but you need to dive to the rather long-winded and never entirely logical menu to seek out 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. Although this is not a bad range of functions, the fact there’s no ISO button will doubtlessly result in a large amount of photographers thinking about purchasing Nikon J1 to be unhappy.

There exists a button around the rear labelled “F” but alas, this is not a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it enables you to quickly choose from the continuous shooting modes, when it is in Video mode it helps you to toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There are two more important controls for the back of the camera, including a scroll wheel throughout the four-way pad along with a rocker switch marked with a loupe icon. The scroll wheel can be used to set the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (when you’ve found them inside menu, that is), as the rocker switch controls the aperture. The key reason why it’s a loupe icon near to it truly is that control is needed to zoom in by using an image to test for critical focus in Playback mode. Lastly, you will discover four small buttons around the navigation pad, flush contrary to the rear panel in the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.

So what on earth are the type shooting modes about the mode dial exactly about? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked with a green camera icon, is the place you will need to be quite often. With the mode dial set to the present position, it is possible to pick your required exposure mode in the menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a brilliant auto mode in which the camera analyses the scene when in front of its lens and picks exactly what it thinks could be the right way of that one scene. You can also make a choice with the conventional PASM modes, which offer you full menu access as well as the ability to manually set the aperture, shutter speed, or both (Program AE Shift is available in P mode). ISO and white balance can also be manually selected, but only on the menu, as mentioned above.

Needless to say there’s AWB and auto ISO also, using the latter coming in three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) helping you to specify how high you want your camera to look once the light gets low. It’s also possible to choose between three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, the place that the camera takes power over what it focusses on (this isn’t an incredible mode to own since your default because camera obviously can’t read your thoughts and may give attention to another thing than your actual subject); Single Point, where you can select among 135 AF points beginning with hitting OK then moving the active AF point throughout the frame while using the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, where you pick your subject, press OK and invite the digital camera to trace that subject since it moves around, provided that it won’t leave the frame of course.

The Nikon 1 J1 has a intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that mixes contrast- and phase-difference detection likewise because the Fujifilm F300EXR did. This allows the Nikon 1 J1 to concentrate 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 this planet, and this also matches our experience - given that there’s enough light. When light levels drop, you switches to contrast-detect AF which, though faster than you are on most cameras, isn’t you’d like another method. It certainly is the camera that decides which AF technique to use - the consumer doesn’t have a affect this.

Generally speaking, the J1 in most cases only make use of 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 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, first you should hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK and make use of the scroll wheel to alter focus. To be of assistance using this type of, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central area of the image and displays a rudimentary focus scale along the right side from the frame - but those include the only focusing aids you get. There is not any peaking function available as on some rival models.

The J1 comes with a electronic shutter (the V1 even offers a mechanical shutter). It’s completely silent (the main objective confirmation beep can be disabled from your menu) and allows the usage of shutter speeds as soon as 1/16,000th of a second and, with all the Electronic Hi setting selected, permits you to shoot full-resolution stills at 60 fps. Note however that although this is the major achievement, it’s restricted by a buffer which could only hold 12 raw files. Additionally, the usage of this mode precludes AF tracking - you will 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 taken. The only application you can think about where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really come in handy is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. With this rate, a few 5 bracketed shots could be taken in lower than 0.1 second, rendering small movements which could otherwise pose alignment problems - like leaves being blown within the wind - a non-issue. Alas, the Nikon J1 will not offer such a feature - actually it won’t offer autoexposure bracketing whatsoever.

Moving on to film mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. First and foremost, the digital camera may be set to shoot Full HD footage, and you even are able to choose between 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, dependant upon whether you want to work with progressive or interlaced video. If you can’t need Full HD, additionally, there are 720p @ 60fps, which is really smooth whilst still being counts as high definition. Secondly, you obtain full manual treating exposure in video mode. It is really an option; you don’t have to shoot in M mode nevertheless, you can if that is what 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 the H.264 codec and stored as MOV files. There are separate shutter release buttons for stills and video, and thanks to this - along with the massive processing power from the Nikon J1 - you may take multiple full-resolution stills even while recording HD video. This works the opposite too - you may capture a show clip regardless if the mode dial is incorporated in the Still Image position, by simply pressing the red movie shutter release. We’ve found that in cases like this you will usually record the playback quality at 720p/60fps.

In addition to being efficient 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 and the aspect ratio can be an ultra-widescreen 2.67:1, though the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo and the like. These videos are played back at 30fps, and that is greater than 13x slower compared to capture speed of 400fps, allowing you to get creative and show the world a range of interesting phenomena that happen too quickly to observe instantly. The Nikon J1 goes even more by a 1200fps video mode, nevertheless the resolution and overall quality is too poor to the to become genuinely useful.

Your third icon around the mode dial is short for Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows your camera to capture at the very least 20 photos with a single press with the shutter release, including some which are taken before fully depressing the button. The digital camera analyses the person pictures inside series and discards 15 of them, keeping just the five it thinks are best regarding sharpness and composition. This feature might be genuinely useful when photographing fast action and fleeting moments.

Finally, you will find there’s so-called Motion Snapshot mode the place that the camera records a quick high-definition movie - whose buffering starts with a half-press on the shutter release, so again includes events that had happened ahead of the button was fully depressed - and also uses a still photograph. The movie and the still image are stored in separate files nevertheless the camera can combine them into a single slow-motion clip with vocals. It’s fun but we can’t really envision people by using this shooting mode regularly. (In the event you look at the video using a computer, it’ll play back at normal speed, without sound, which means you mode is actually only interesting if you see the clip in-camera or hook the digital camera around an HDTV by using an HDMI cable.)

The Nikon J1 stores pics and vids on SD/SDHC/SDXC memory cards, and props up the fastest UHS-I speed class. The digital camera operates on a reduced EN-EL20 battery to its V1 your government, and it is consequently capable of producing even less shots on one charge, managing around 230, although it does help to produce the digital camera body smaller sized. The camera’s tripod socket consists of metal and is also in line with the lens’ optical axis. This actually also ensures that changing batteries or cards isn’t likely as you move the J1 is mounted on a tripod, since the hinges of the battery/card compartment door are so close to the tripod mount.

So, how did we love to while using Nikon 1 J1? Similarly, we liked it a great deal. In good light, its auto-focus technique is indeed faster than pretty much anything we’ve used up to now, to be able to track and lock give attention to a range of truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding lots 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 as we had used a slower camera. The built-in pop-up flash proved more useful that it is modest guide number might suggest, with the clever design minimising red-eye.

However, the Nikon J1 has its share of frustrating idiosyncrasies beginning with anyone interface that makes you dive into your menu to reach functions as basic as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons with a finished product, they might at the very least result in the “F” button customisable via a firmware update. Also, nevertheless there is a separate button for exposure compensation - which is a great thing - Some try to activate an active histogram, community . would’ve made exposure compensation much more useful and simple to work with. Again, this will probably be fixed in firmware.

We missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, specifically in bright light or while using the telephoto lens which does not lend itself well to being held out at arms length. The J1 just has a glass dust shield because it’s defense against unwanted debris, rather than more proactive sensor cleaning unit the V1 offers, and the smaller battery ensures that you will have to buy another someone to go through the day’s heavy shooting. The lack of an accessory port implies that almost none of the Nikon 1 accessories are suitable for the J1, such as the external flash and GPS unit.

One more thing we failed to like could be that the camera would always show the picture just taken for a couple seconds onscreen, therefore we failed to find a way to turn this instant postview function completely off (while you can at any rate cancel it with a half-press with the shutter release). Finally, even though the camera is normally fast and responsive, the digital camera takes way too long to wake from sleep mode when it has been idle for quite a while, contributing to many missed shots.

With that said, the Nikon 1 J1 can be a small and compact, high-performance system camera they enjoy its larger would use a number of tweaks to the graphical user interface to better suit the requirements 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 gives you. Let us now observe how the Nikon 1 J1 fared from the image quality department.