Article directory search Surfing4saintsWeb Articles directory is a free article submission service

The Nikon 1 J1 is often a stylish compact system camera featuring a 10-megapixel “CX” format sensor plus the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Boasting continuous shooting speeds as high as 60 fps at full resolution, Full HD video capture, an ultra-fast hybrid auto-focus system, Smart Photo Selector and also a unique Motion Snapshot Mode, the portable Nikon J1 also provides more conventional shooting modes like Programmed Auto, Aperture and Shutter Priority, in addition to Metered Manual. Also agreeable is usually a built-in pop-up flash that has a guide number of 5, a 3 inch rear display as well as an electronic shutter. Priced at $649.95 / 549.99 using a 10-30mm zoom lens, $699.95 / 599.99 with 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 take sale later this month.

The Nikon 1 J1 is generally crafted from aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts and is also therefore heavier than you would think dependant on its size alone, weighing 234g to the body only. In addition, it feels better made compared to the 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 will need you to retain the camera’s weight inside the left hand, clutching the lens, and rehearse your right hand for balance and operating the controls. This is really the good thing mainly because it pushes you to pay attention to holding your camera properly, which in turn goes further towards avoiding shake-induced blur within your photos.

The camera’s clean, minimalist front plate is dominated by the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Rather than like a scaled-down version in the traditional F mount, it is just a fresh design that delivers 100% electronic communication between the attached lens as well as the camera body, from several contacts. Just like within the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, you will find there’s white dot for easy lens alignment, although it has moved in the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) to the top level in the mount. The lenses themselves include a short silver ridge about the lens barrel, which ought to be in alignment with said dot to ensure that one to have the capacity to attach the lens on the camera. Although this may necessitate a bit of becoming accustomed to, it really makes changing lenses quicker and much easier.

Without any lens attached, you can view the sensor sitting directly behind the plane in the bayonet mount. Just like the mount itself, the sensor is completely new. Measuring 13.2×8.8mm this “CX” format imaging chip has quantity floor of the most popular imagers utilized in compact and bridge cameras like the Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, but only about 50 % 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. Considering the fact that Four Thirds has a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” breaks down to to around 2.72, and therefore a 10mm lens has approximately the same 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 similar to a 27.2-81.6mm (or, practically speaking, 28-80mm) FX lens regarding its angle-of-view range.

Other Nikon J1’s faceplate is actually empty, featuring only the lens release, a receiver for the optional ML-L3 infrared remote control, two narrow slits for that microphone either sides with the lens, and an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There isn’t any grip by any means around the front in the Nikon 1 J1.

There’s 2 means of powering for the Nikon1 J1. You may make use of the on/off button sitting near the shutter release or, for those who have a collapsible-barrel contact attached, just press the unlocking button on the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an action that causes the camera to interchange on automatically. It is an ingenious solution as you need to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes just over an extra - not write home about yet still decent and entirely adequate.

You are able to frame your shots with all the rear screen - there isn’t any electronic viewfinder as for the V1 model, a vital difference between the 2 main. The LCD screen can be a three-inch, 460,000-dot display that boasts wide viewing angles, great definition and accurate colours only so-so visibility in strong daylight. We missed the EVF with the J1 alongside the V1, in both bright sunlit conditions or with all the 30-110mm telezoom lens as holding your camera up to eye-level helped to stabilise the lens and prevent camera shake.

The control layout is quite peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 includes a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks most of the shooting modes that are usually available on similar dials - that include P, A, S and M - community . has enough room to fit them. These modes can be found for the J1 nevertheless, you ought to 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 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. Evidently this isn’t a bad range of functions, the reality that there is no ISO button will doubtlessly create a large amount of photographers considering acquiring the Nikon J1 to become unhappy.

There’s a button for the rear labelled “F” but alas, it’s not a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it lets you quickly select from the continuous shooting modes, whilst in Video mode it allows you to toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There are two more valuable controls within the back with the camera, together with a scroll wheel throughout the four-way pad and a rocker switch marked with a loupe icon. The scroll wheel is used setting the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (after you have found them within the menu, that’s), as the rocker switch controls the aperture. The key reason why it’s a loupe icon beside it truly is that control is used to zoom in on an image to check on for critical concentrate Playback mode. Lastly, you will find four small buttons across the navigation pad, flush up against the rear panel from the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.

Precisely what are those shooting modes on the mode dial information on? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked with a green camera icon, is to will want to be quite often. With all the mode dial set to the position, you are able to pick your desired exposure mode from your menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a smart automatic mode the place that the camera analyses the scene facing its lens and picks exactly what thinks could be the right way of that specific scene. You can also pick one from the conventional PASM modes, which provide you with full menu access and also the chance 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, only from the menu, as already mentioned.

Naturally there’s AWB and auto ISO likewise, with all the latter being released three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) letting you specify how high you desire your camera to search in the event the light gets low. You may also pick from three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, the place that the camera takes power over exactly what it focusses on (this is simply not a fantastic mode to obtain since your default because the camera obviously can’t read the mind and may even focus on something more important than your actual subject); Single Point, that you can make considered one of 135 AF points first by hitting OK after which moving the active AF point around the frame with all the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, where you pick your subject, press OK and invite your camera to track that subject mainly because it moves around, providing doesn’t necessarily leave the frame of course.

The Nikon 1 J1 has an intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that combines contrast- and phase-difference detection similarly as the Fujifilm F300EXR did. This allows the Nikon 1 J1 to focus extremely quickly in good light, even on the moving subject. The business claims the Nikon 1 system cameras will be the fastest-focusing machines on this planet, and this 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 nearly you’d like another method. It is the camera that decides which AF approach to use - the person has no relation to this.

Usually, the J1 in most cases only resort to contrast detection when light levels are low. In good light, we were able to take sharp photos of fast-moving subjects. The Nikon J1 certainly won’t disappoint here. Manual focusing can be possible, although Nikon 1 lenses will not have focus rings. If you want to focus manually, you first of all must hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK then make use of the scroll wheel to alter focus. To help you out using this type of, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central the main image and displays a rudimentary focus scale down 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 posseses an electronic shutter (the V1 also offers a mechanical shutter). It’s totally silent (the main focus confirmation beep might be disabled in the menu) and allows the application of shutter speeds you’d like 1/16,000th of an second and, with all the Electronic Hi setting selected, permits you to shoot full-resolution stills at 60 frames per second. Note however that although this is the major achievement, it’s restricted by a buffer that will 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 would like that -, along with the viewfinder goes blank as you move the pictures will be taken. The linksys e2000 application we could visualize where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really be useful is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. At this rate, several 5 bracketed shots could possibly be consumed in less than 0.1 second, rendering small movements that will otherwise pose alignment problems - like leaves being blown from the wind - a non-issue. Alas, the Nikon J1 won’t offer this type of feature - in reality no offer autoexposure bracketing in any way.

Trying out the playback quality mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. First of all, the camera might be set to shoot Full HD footage, and you also even get to select from 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, depending on whether you’d rather work with progressive or interlaced video. If you do not need Full HD, there is also 720p @ 60fps, which is really smooth but still counts as hd. Secondly, you have full manual treatments for exposure in video mode. It is an option; you won’t need to shoot in M mode but you can in the event that’s what you require. Thirdly, you obtain fast, continuous AF in video mode, and delay well, especially in good light. Movies are compressed while using the H.264 codec and stored as MOV files. You will find separate shutter release buttons for stills and video, and because of this - along with 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 are able to capture a film clip even though the mode dial is with the Still Image position, by just pressing the red movie shutter release. We’ve discovered that in such cases the digital camera will invariably record the video at 720p/60fps.

And also capable of shooting regular movies in HD quality, the Nikon 1 J1 can also shoot video at 400fps for slow-motion playback. The resolution is lower and also the aspect ratio is undoubtedly an ultra-widescreen 2.67:1, however the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo and the like. These videos are replayed at 30fps, which can be in excess of 13x slower versus the capture speed of 400fps, allowing you to get creative and display to the world numerous interesting phenomena that happen too quickly to look at in real time. The Nikon J1 goes a little more forward by a 1200fps video mode, even so the resolution and overall quality is too poor with the to become genuinely useful.

The 3rd icon within the mode dial represents Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows your camera to capture no less than 20 photos at the single press in the shutter release, including some that had been taken before fully depressing the button. You analyses the individual pictures within the series and discards 15 of those, keeping exactly the five who’s thinks would be best with regard to sharpness and composition. This feature can be genuinely useful when photographing fast action and fleeting moments.

Finally, there is a so-called Motion Snapshot mode the location where the camera records a short high-definition movie - whose buffering starts at a half-press with the shutter release, so again includes events that had happened before the button was fully depressed - as well as has a still photograph. The movie plus the still image are held in separate files even so the camera can combine them into a single slow-motion clip with background music. It’s fun but we simply cannot really envision people by using this shooting mode all the time. (If you see the video with a computer, it’ll play back at normal speed, without sound, and this mode is actually only interesting in case you observe the clip in-camera or hook the digital camera as much as an HDTV through an HDMI cable.)

The Nikon J1 stores pics and vids on SD/SDHC/SDXC memory cards, and sports ths fastest UHS-I speed class. The digital camera operates on an inferior EN-EL20 battery to the V1 your government, and is consequently capable of producing much less shots on a single charge, managing around 230, while it does help to produce the camera body small. The camera’s tripod socket is made from metal and is also positioned in line with all the lens’ optical axis. This also ensures that changing batteries or cards is not possible while the J1 is attached to a tripod, as the hinges from the battery/card compartment door are too towards the tripod mount.

So, how did we like while using Nikon 1 J1? On one side, we liked it a whole lot. In good light, its auto-focus system is indeed faster than essentially anything we’ve used up to now, to be able to track and lock target an array of truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding many 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 after 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.

However, the Nikon J1 has its own share of frustrating idiosyncrasies you start with an individual interface that can make you dive into the menu to reach functions as basic as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons to your finished product, they can at least increase the risk for “F” button customisable by way of a firmware update. Also, you will find an avid button for exposure compensation - the a valuable thing - I did not find a way to activate an active histogram, although it could have made exposure compensation considerably more useful and straightforward to make use of. Again, this will oftimes be fixed in firmware.

We missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, particularly 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 because it is defense against unwanted debris, as opposed to the more proactive sensor cleaning unit how the V1 offers, along with the smaller battery means that you should buy an additional anyone to get through a day’s heavy shooting. Deficiency of an accessory port implies that almost no Nikon 1 accessories are that will work with the J1, such as the external flash and GPS unit.

One more thing we would not like was that the camera would always show the picture just taken for some seconds onscreen, and now we didn’t find a way to turn this instant postview function completely off (even if you can at any rate cancel it by way of a half-press on the shutter release). Finally, whilst the camera is normally fast and responsive, the camera takes excessively long to wake from sleep mode in the event it is idle for quite a while, resulting in a number of missed shots.

With that said, the Nikon 1 J1 is really a smaller than average and compact, high-performance system camera they like its larger can use a couple of tweaks to its gui to improve suit the requirements of serious amateurs. The intended market you work in of casual users will cherish it for the sheer speed, built-in flash, compact size along with the fun features it provides. Let us now observe the Nikon 1 J1 fared inside the image quality department.