Nikon nudges in for a perfect fit

With its Nikon 1 series – the V1 and its little sister J1 – Nikon has hopped on the bandwagon toting the increasingly popular mirror-less, interchangeable-lens cameras.

I had a chance to try the V1 and was impressed in its robust performance and the pleasing quality of the shots.

The V1 comes close in its abilities to a digital SLR camera, but it’s more compact. The interchangeable lenses mean more choices among Nikon 1-mount lens and there’s an expansion slot for accessories, including a GPS module for geo-tagging your pictures.

But the V1 uses a rather small sensor compared to similar cameras from other brands. Its CX-format sensor is 13.2x8.8mm, so the picture angle is approximately 2.7x lens focal length. The 10-30mm and 30-100mm kit lenses provided for this review are equivalent to 27-80mm and 80-270mm focal length in 33mm photography.

A nice thing is that F-mount lens adapter is available so that the V1 can be used with a huge selection of Nikon F-mount lens.

The V1 has 10.1-megapixel resolution and a three-inch LCD screen with 921,000-pixel resolution.

I was delighted to find that the V1 also comes with a 0.47-inch colour LCD viewfinder with diopter adjustment. The electronic viewfinder is very useful when framing shots in bright sunlight.

The body is reinforced magnesium alloy, so it’s rugged, but you also get an elegant design, available in white, black, red, silver or pink, and the kit lens is the same colour.

The V1 is intuitive to use with a minimum of buttons and switches. Among others, you have power on/off, the shutter and video record, as well as the mode-dial switch with its four shooting modes – Still Image, Smart Photo Selector, Movie and Motion Snapshot.

Still Image mode offers a further choice: Scene Auto Selector for the easiest shooting or others with adjustments for the shooting parameters.

Scene Auto Selector automatically chooses one of five scene set-ups – Portrait, Landscape, Night Portrait, Close-up or Auto. 

In my test, the V1 chose the correct mode every time, but I do wish it would let me select the scene mode on my own if I preferred. Compensation for that lack comes in the form of Picture Control, which has a selection of six filters – Standard, Neutral, Vivid, Monochrome, Portrait and Landscape, plus customisable settings.

If you want more control, there are four shooting modes – Programmed Auto with Flexible Program (P), Shutter-Priority Auto (S), Aperture-Priority Auto (A) and Manual (M). All of these are operated via a switch above the dial switch. Go there, for example, to change the aperture or shutter speed.

Advanced users will love that, and also the adjustable settings for exposure compensation, locking exposure value and locking focus. 

The V1 can also record stills in RAW format for processing on your computer.

Smart Photo Selector is useful for taking pictures at parties or any even where the action is fast. 

The camera grabs about 10 shots in quick succession and then picks the best five “finalists” so you can choose the “winner”.

Motion Snapshot records a brief video just before taking a picture. Movie mode captures Full HD video at resolutions of 1080/60i and 1080/30p. 

The V1 also has a mini-pin HDMI connector for playing clips on a large-screen LCD TV.

The V1 behaved beautifully in my test. It started up and was ready to shoot in about one second and there was practically no shutter lag. 

Its portraits and landscapes (thank to the 27mm wide-angle lens) were lovely, the colours well saturated.

I also got steady, brilliant shots of night lights without a tripod.

My only gripe is the lack of a built-in flash. 

You need to buy an external flash module to mount on its expansion port. With no flash, indoor pictures can be too dark if you don’t know how to adjust the aperture.

The Nikon V1, with 10-30mm and 30-110mm lenses, retails for Bt33,900.

 

        Key specs

Type: Advanced Camera with Interchangeable Lenses

Lens mount: Nikon 1-mount

Picture Angle: 2.7x lens focal length (Nikon CX format)

Effective pixels: 10.1 million

Sensor: 13.2x8.8mm CMOS

Storage media: SD, SDHC, SDXC

Shutter speed: 1/16,000 to 30 seconds 

ISO sensitivity: 100-3200

AF-area mode: Single-point – 135 focus areas, Auto-area – 41, Subject tracking, Face-priority AF

Battery: EN-EL20 Lithium-ion Battery, about 230 shots per charge

Dimensions: 106 x 61 x 29.8mm 

Weight: 234g, camera body only