Nikon 1 V1 Mirrorless 10.1MP Digital Camera, CMOS CX Image Sensor, 3.0" LCD Display, 10-30mm Lens, Expeed 3 Image Processor, White

2011-11-22T19:00:00

I bought this camera in thinking that I would use this as backup for my D7000, but this camera is more geared towards a point & shoot method of photography and does not meet my requirements for using it as a backup. Good points about the camera are that the camera is light, picture quality and low light performance is good for the size of the sensor which means better than a compact but it is not near the performance of a APS sized sensor IMHO. Build quality is excellent, handling is good but you do have to go into the menu a lot if you change exposure modes, metering methods, or AF area modes, if you leave everything on auto this camera will work well for you. AF performance is fast but it still lacks performance for moving objects such as birds in flight, auto racing, etc., over time as I get used to operating the AF area mode in the tracking mode I may change my mind on this. The bad things (improvement items) about the camera IMO. The feature set is lacking given the price you are paying for the camera. There is no programmable function button, there is an "F" button but you cannot change its function. This causes you to have go into the menu to change your exposure, metering, and AF area modes which can lead to missed shots. There is no auto exposure bracketing; I tend to shoot a lot of high contrast pictures so HDR is important to me. Without auto exposure bracketing it makes it a lot harder to do HDR. If do not use HDR this feature will not be missed as much. The picture preview cannot be turned off; this gets downright annoying when trying to take action shots. As soon as you release the shutter button the last picture pops up on the LCD or the EVF for a few seconds. I can understand that this could be useful, but give us the ability to turn the preview off. The camera does not come with a standard hotshoe for flash. This means you have to buy the Nikon dedicated flash for the 1 series which eats up your camera battery and costs about $150 extra. It sure would have been nice to put an SB400 on this camera, but in keeping with the small size of the camera I guess Nikon wanted to keep the flash small, so no speedlights with batteries. It would be nice in the future for Nikon to offer an adapter to fit the accessory shoe on the camera to fit a standard Nikon speedlight. The camera will only display a luminous histogram, or I cannot figure out how to display the RGB channels. I guess we have returned to the days of the D70 only it is worse. At least the D70 had a yellow outline so that it is crystal clear when highlights or shadows were blown out. The V1 is white outline with a white graph which makes it difficult at times to see if highlights or shadows are blown out. Again for the price of the camera Nikon should have given us RGB histograms. The "best shot" and "still motion" shooting modes are a total waste IMHO. You may find a use for them, but I would rather have the above features added rather than this fluff. I was going to return the camera but my wife seems to like it a lot so it solved my problem on what to get her for X-Mas. This camera is not for me but it might be what you are looking for. If the price were about $300 dollars cheaper for the kit I may have thought it was a better value. If I need a point and shoot, there a cameras out there with a better feature set for a lot less money. It may not have interchangeable lenses, but I sure will have a lot more money in the bank. I sure hope that Nikon issues a firmware update sometime in the future to add some of the features that are missing but I not going to hold my breath, Nikon rarely will offer updates to increase the feature set only. Hopefully Nikon will get better at this type of camera and just maybe it will find a place in my bag.

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