Nikon '1' mirrorless Camera System Announced

[Hamish Gill]

Nikon have announced a their new mirrorless interchangeable system with the catchy name of Nikon 1.
The name is seemingly derived from the 1" type sensor it uses.
A 1" sensor roughly translates to a 2.7x crop factor.
This means a 10mm lens will give an equivelent focal length of 27mm and a "normal lens" ie approx 50mm would require a 18mm lens on a Nikon 1 system camera.

With me so far? No?

Basically, its a smaller sensor than in the Panasonic G series cameras (2x crop factor) But bigger than most no interchangeable lens cameras such as the Nikon 7100 (4.5x crop factor)

I'm telling you all this to help explain where this camera will fit in to the market place, or seemingly more importantly Nikon's market.

This new format is being touted as "CX" by Nikon, they already have "DX" cameras and "FX" cameras
CX is for these small interchangeable lens cameras
DX is for (currently) consumer level DSLRs
FX is for Pro DSLRs

It would appear that Nikon have done this so as not to affect sales of their already very popular consumer level DSLR's
The smaller sensor of this range of cameras should give Nikon the ability to create an interchangeable lens system camera that is actually much closer to the size of non interchangeable lens compact cameras. And that appears to be what they have done...
By doing this they are seemingly pitching this camera at a market place currently only filled with the Pentax Q.
Whether or not this is a good idea or not will remain to be seen... my guess is that the Nikon brand will work well in its favor.
Image quality will of course be a factor, and there is no telling how well they will fair until they are in the hands of the users ... But in good time im sure they will be plenty of pixel peepers to tell us all about it all over the internet!

So what about the cameras them selves?

There are 2!

First is the J1, the smaller of the two ...

also available in red pink and silver
with the following specs

10mega pixels
Hybrid AF
10fps shooting with AF
60fps without AF
High def video

lots more here

Then there is the V1

Seemingly the same specs but with a EFV, magnesium alloy body and ability to attach a flash

lots more here

So where do they stand out from the crowd?
Well, speed is obviously a factor here!
60fps is a lot of shots in a second!
How useful this is day to day, I'm not sure?

2 features that seem to have come from this are as follows

• Motion Snapshot: brings your stills to life in a click. Harnesses the camera’s processing speed to simultaneously record a slow motion movie and a still image. As soon as you’ve taken your shot it instantly combines the two to create a ‘living image’ and capture a moment in time as never before.Smart Photo Selector: always gets the best shot. Uses pre-post capture technology to shoot 20 high-resolution images before and after you release the shutter. Saves your ‘best’ five shots for you to choose from. Images are recommended based on facial expression, composition and focus.​

Perhaps not aimed at the traditional photographer, but with the constant bluring of lines between video and still hardware this is an inevitable upshot(?)

The second thing that makes this camera stand out from the crowd is the Hybrid AF
Although Nikons info regarding this is somewhere less than useful as to how this will be an advantage...

Revolutionary Autofocus system: instantly switches between 73-point Phase-Detection AF system and 135-point Contrast Detect AF system for sharp movies and stills in any situation. And with Phase-Detection AF available during movie recording, you get sharply focused action scenes every time.

As for lenses
There is a 10-30mm (27-81 equiv)

http://www.europe-nikon.com/tmp/EU/2419865273/3760176746/2327365364/27184057/1391280926/2780083465/1237327324/1809293855/4144066801/3706136198/859545615.jpg[/img}
[URL]http://www.europe-nikon.com/en_GB/product/1-nikkor-lenses/1-nikkor-vr-10-30mm-f-3-5-5-6[/URL]

a 30-110 (81-297mm equiv)
[IMG]http://www.europe-nikon.com/tmp/EU/2419865273/3760176746/2327365364/27184057/1391280926/2780083465/1237327324/1926009694/4144066801/3706136198/1050939436.jpg
http://www.europe-nikon.com/en_GB/product/1-nikkor-lenses/1-nikkor-vr-30-110mm-f-3-8-5-6

a 10mm f2.8 pancake

http://www.europe-nikon.com/en_GB/product/1-nikkor-lenses/1-nikkor-10mm-f-2-8

And a 10-100mm (27-270 equiv)

http://www.europe-nikon.com/en_GB/product/1-nikkor-lenses/1-nikkor-vr-10-100mm-f-4-5-5-6-pd-zoom

There is also an AFS compatible adapter that allows the user to attach current nikon f mount lenses

http://www.europe-nikon.com/en_GB/product/accessories/1-nikkor-lenses/others/f-mount-adapter

which would (should i chose to buy all this kit) mean i could attach my 70-200mm 2.8 lens to one of these and have 10mp of 540mm f2.8 60fps to play with ... ... ... which might be fun

lots more to look at on Nikon's site here

 

[Darren Bradley]

With a sensor that size, I really don't see the point, I'm afraid. I was hoping that Nikon's system would at least be APS-C.

 

[Hamish Gill]

Attempts at balanced view aside ...
Yeah ... I think I might agree
I bit more mooching around on the Internet looking at the sizes of the cameras reveals that the new panasonic g3 is about the same size as the Nikon v1. So the smaller sensor of the Nikon has given no real advantage there!
I think I can see why Nikon have done it ...
I'm just my sure it's an entirely clever move
I think this is a battle better faught between Sony and 4/3rds ...
And looking at the Sony NEX7, on paper, it seems the one to beat

I don't think Nikon wanted to effect sales of dx format kit, or **** off people with large quantities of 'f' lenses, this doesnt tread on anyone's toes ... It's safe in many respects, or perhaps conservative is a better word... but just a bit dull, nothing to get excited about!

Regarding using a dx sensor...
maybe Sonys angle was better conceived? But I'm still not sure really the point of having both STL and NEX ranges when the NEX does everything(?) the STL does and the STL doesn't have the advantage of an optical VF?
There is confusion there for me, a mixed message, if I was looking at buying a Sony I wouldn't know which one to go with, and if set on the STL I would wonder if Sony were really dedicated to the cause, or if they were set on going down the smaller camera roads

If I was a camera maunfacture, like Nikon, I'd have fx format SLR's for pro, and high end consumer, then a camera like the NEX range for consumer ... The consumer market cares less for optical vf (proven by Sony) anyway!

As it stands, I'll stick to my d3 and x100! (or though, I do stand by what I originally said... I'd like to mount my 70-200 on a j1 )

 

[john clarke]

Well I'm no expert but only 10 million pixels. Maybe that is not enough as people I know always seem to think that more pixels equals better. Of course not as simple as that but you get my point?

John

 

[Pete Askew]

Pretty well my thoughts there Hamish. Maybe we'll all be surprised by the image quality! I was reading the review of the NEX 7 on the Luminous Landscape site, and it did sound impressive. http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/sony_nex_7_first_impressions.shtml

I'm still looking for a pocket camera. So far the closest I've come is the Ricoh GR Digital III but it's far from ideal. Certainly the X100 isn't it for me (too big and too much overlap with the M9). The NEX 7 or Nikon with a pancake lens may be nearer to what I'm looking for but somehow I think there is still something out there yet to come. Backward compatibility with lenses that I already own (whether that be F mount or M mount) would be attractive but, in reality, I doubt I would exploit that. I'm in no rush though so I'll wait and see what emerges.

 

[Larry Bolch]

The m4/3 and APS-C cameras from Sony and Samsung are very different beasts. You may notice that no where does Nikon refer to this as a "mirrorless" camera. While the former have the mitochondrial DNA of of SLRs—to the point that Panasonic retained the prism-hump, even though it is non-functional—Nikon has just created an interchangeable lens, high-end Coolpix camera. It would be silly to refer to a ship as "wheel-less" since boats never had wheels, just as Coolpix cameras have never had mirrors.

The designated buyer is clear—a P&S user who is not a photographer but wants a capable family camera, a step above the best of current enthusiast compacts—the G12, LX5, P7100, and so on. It will be sharing shelf-space at the big-box stores with these cameras—not with the mirrorless and dSLRs.

In this context it is quite impressive. Its sensor is 2.66× that of the LX5 et. al., and four times that of most others. To give a sense of context, a full frame is 2.6× the size of the APS-C sensor and 3.6× the Four/Thirds sensor. Compared to a full-frame dSLR, it has only a 2.7 crop factor. In relation to its class of cameras, this is a very large sensor!

Though it is a full-time LiveView camera, Nikon has managed to include phase detection into the sensor and they claim it is the fastest auto-focusing camera ever. Not just compared the P&S and mirrorless cameras, but way faster than the D3s sports camera. Soccer moms will be in heaven. It has a bunch of other features aimed at saving the camera-illiterate from their foibles. All the aids and training wheels of a true P&A are retained for those who want snapshots without the years of learning that it takes to become a photographer.

It has a new generation processor that one would expect to see on the next generation of dSLRs, capable of dealing with 60 full-resolution still-photographs per second. Four movie resolutions including full HD at either 30p or 60i, as well as 400 fps and 1200 fps slow motion at reduced resolutions. It can do stills and movies simultaneously.

For the gadget-head looking for a new shiny object to flaunt, it is fully buzzword enabled. "Smart Photo Selector", "Full HD 1080p", "dual-core EXPEED 3™ image processing engine", "Motion Snapshot", "Multi-Accessory Port" and so on. I can think of a number of friends who would drool quarts like an old St. Bernard, over this. They now carry iPhones—which may tell you something. Geeks—but Yuppy geeks. Impossible to photograph them without either an iPhone or iPad in hand. I have no proof, but strongly suspect they take both to bed with them.

The target customer really does not need APS-C or full-frame. Even though the camera can shoot RAW, I expect very few cameras ever will. I don't know what software will be included, but I expect it will be very easy to learn and with a very limited range. The target V1 customer is not the target customer for Photoshop. While the camera may be capable of a decent 30×40, for the most part it ain't-a-gonna happen. Facebook will be deluged with its images—Flickr not so.

It would not surprise me if more than 50% of all sales were in Japan. You really did not see the point as you said, but the Japanese do. Mirrorless cameras have had a huge impact on both P&S and dSLR sales there. A feature-loaded Nikon should slay the competition in the Japanese stores. In the rest of the world, it seems like an ideal family camera for those who have mastered P&S. Lots of nice candy colours for the fashionistas, small enough to fit in purse or pocket. Loads of cute accessories in the near future for the gadget heads. What more do you want?

OK, a full-frame mirrorless camera—which has zero to do with the Nikon 1. I would be surprised to see it in the D4 or even the D5. Nikon is conservative, and even though the Nikon 1 is ground-breaking in a lot of ways, it is done by a whole different design team, engineering team and marketing team than those who do the D-cameras—and possibly even those in Coolpix. They certainly inhabit different offices, and even different countries. If the D6 is mirrorless, the folks who create it may never have met anyone on the Nikon 1 team.

Realize that Japanese companies form extensive three-dimensional spider webs, not necessarily transparent to the outside world. The Nikon Group is just one of many companies in the Mitsubishi Group. The top executives from each company meet about once a month.

The Nikon Group is parent to dozens of world-wide companies that may never have any contact at all, with each acting much like an independent company. Employees of Nikon Sendai Ltd. may have had only a passing interest in the company that designed the Nikon 1, and pay little attention to it. While Nikon Sendai build the D3s and D700, Nikon Thailand builds the D300s. They both may contract consultants and engineers from another Nikon company—or not. The FM10 film camera—that is still in production last time I checked—is entirely built by Cosina, but marketed by one of Nikon Group's marketing companies under the Nikon brand name. It has also been a Yashica, Rollei, Canon, Olympus and more.

Business is done differently in Japan.

 

[Hamish Gill]

An interested perspective Larry, I think for the most of us we can only really judge on how this camera may fit in to our individual world!For me, as i have said, id love to stick one on the end of my 70-200 ... and thats about it!But as you say, im not the target market, and nor is i suspect anyone likely to post on a photography forum ...We are discussing a product that we don't get, its bound to bring up some concerns as to where it fits as for us, as really, it doesn't and wasn't designed to This sheds a little more light on nikons thoughts http://www.dpreview.com/articles/3281713418/nikon-1-system-first-impressionsMy concerns remain though, for Nikon at least, how big is this market, we live in a world were new products/inventions have to either fit in current markets or carve their own ... Is this a fillable gap? time will tell i suppose ...you have to look at the ipad, a product that filled a niche that had previously failed as a niche... At the end of the day, Nikon, i'm sure, know what they are doing ... our speculation is relatively pointless

 

[Hamish Gill]

3200 iso looks fairly good for a small sensor anywayhttp://www.dpreview.com/galleries/r...162/dsc_0139?inalbum=nikon-j1-preview-samples

 

[Larry Bolch]

I only find it interesting for the new technology it is introducing, as appied to my next camera four or five years from now. For the moment, the D700 and X100 meet all my needs very well. And at the moment, there really is no slot into which it fits for me.

Above all, the hybrid phase/contrast detection auto-focus will eventually impact us all. If accurate, it will empower soccer mums to be able to track their little heroes with long lenses and get extreme sharpness nearly 100% of the time. For the people here, it means that in the near future, LiveView becomes fully viable—both for stills and video. If the sensor can do phase detection at a speed many times faster than with the mirror, the mirror becomes a bottleneck and will have to go.

Pretty much every movie mode is covered and some new are introduced—as in Movie Snapshot. I was very impressed with the slow motion movie results from the Casio Exilim Pro EX-F1, but not impressed enough to actually buy one. My recollection was that it was around $1,000 Cdn which is a bit much for what would be a one-trick pony for me. This is included in the 1. The processor is capable of handling up to 60 frames per second at full 10MP resolution. In an action camera like the D4 with a huge buffer, this would be a game changer.

In the high-end bridge cameras of last decade, there was an extremely useful feature—Best Shot Selector. The camera would shoot up to ten exposures and compare them for edge contrast, choosing the crispest. It worked remarkably well, considering that at ISO400 noise was profound. Shooting available darkness with BSS could produce reasonably good results at ISO100. It is apparently back and much more sophisticated with Smart Photo Selector. The camera uses a pre-cache, which actually starts gathering images before the shutter release is pushed, and once processed provides a selection. Again the soccer mum who waits to see the action shot in the finder before pressing the shutter, not realizing that if you have seen it, then it is history. This may provide the decisive-moment in many cases, which when combined with massively quick and accurate auto-focus, pretty much guarantees results for the camera-impaired.

With new and advanced technologies and features, I feel this is a most historically significant camera. While these are clearly aimed at P&S shooters moving up, the features could well vault the coming generation of senior cameras way ahead of the competition, just as the D3 did four years ago. A week ago, had someone proposed a wager on whether the D4 will have a mirror or not, I would have jumped on the bet. Of course it will. Now, I am not so sure. The EVF in my X100 is superb compared to what I have in my old Coolpix 8400. It has a level of detail that makes accurate macro focusing entirely feasible. It is 1,440,000 dots, while the new Sony EVF adds another million to that. Who could possibly guess what the state of the art is, when budget restraints are relaxed on a pro-camera? Take the features from a $600 camera and add the power and technology of a $6,000 camera and some miracles could be accomplished.

 

[Hamish Gill]

Or D4 with a hybrid VF, now that would be something!
And, respectfully, I'd say a lot more likely than just a efv

 

[Pete Askew]

It's interesting isn't it that we have been looking at convergence of still and video with stills cameras becoming every more video capable. And now we are seeing more video camera functions becoming apparent in stills cameras (with video capability): pre-record loop, peaking, useable EVF, etc. I wonder if there will be any scanning artifacts in any of these multi-shot modes. Interesting times!

 

[Larry Bolch]

Or D4 with a hybrid VF, now that would be something!
And, respectfully, I'd say a lot more likely than just a efv

Fuji was able to achieve its brilliant design with the hybrid finder for only one reason—a fixed focal length lens. This allowed it to achieve a 0.8 meter focusing distance with the OVF, while other rangefinders for multiple focal lengths pretty much top out at a meter or more. Parallax correction is the problem. There have been zoom optical finders in the past. My Coolpix 5000 of a decade back had one that worked quite well. However, it had only to deal with the built in lens 28-85mm equivalent. The camera could be fitted with components to widen or extend the lens, but the OVF was non-functional with them.

Consider then the range of lenses that Nikon has produced over the years from fisheyes to extreme telephotos, which can be fitted with up to 2× tele-extenders. Simply no way to make a practical Fuji-style hybrid finder that I can imagine.

Of course, there could be a mirror-down/mirror-up compromise. Conventional viewing and limited auto-focus with the mirror down option. Mirror up, and the focusing screen is retracted and the EVF screen slides in place allowing the near instantaneous focusing with the sensor. I expect Nikon could pull it off, but what would be the point?

At best, it would satisfy the FUD-meisters who were writing in the Fuji forums prior to the release of the X100 who were convinced that there had been no progress in EVF technology in the past decade. They declared that an EVF was worse than useless and they would never even consider a camera that had one. They were back in full force on the Nikon 1, yesterday, declaring it a total failure in every way. I suspect that negative pontificating is their only pleasure in life. We should probably feel sorry for such souls, but I can't make the effort.