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Site & Board Matters => About This Site => Topic started by: JohnBrew on June 04, 2012, 08:20:20 pm

Title: Nikon V1 - yawn :(
Post by: JohnBrew on June 04, 2012, 08:20:20 pm
Sorry, Nikon missed the boat. The people who have been paid by Nikon to say what a great system this is can now leave the building. Yes, it has super AF. Big deal. It needs a whole lot more to appeal to knowledgeable enthusiasts, starting with a decent (larger) sensor.
Title: Re: Nikon V1 - yawn :(
Post by: RobSaecker on June 04, 2012, 08:42:55 pm
It's not a bad camera at all, for what it is. I'm pretty happy with mine as an alternative to a P&S. But yeah, they could certainly do a better job if they wanted to appeal more to enthusiasts.

Michael, do you have a source for your comment about discounts? I don't see anything other than the rebates that have been in effect for a while now; I see no mention on Nikon's site or dpreview, for instance.
Title: Re: Nikon V1 - yawn :(
Post by: BernardLanguillier on June 04, 2012, 08:57:57 pm
Sorry, Nikon missed the boat. The people who have been paid by Nikon to say what a great system this is can now leave the building. Yes, it has super AF. Big deal. It needs a whole lot more to appeal to knowledgeable enthusiasts, starting with a decent (larger) sensor.

The J1/V1 is simply not a camera targeting experts, it targets the remaining 95% of the market. This being said, I agree 100% with the comments made by Michael in this excellent review.

I personally find the J1 to make a lot more sense than the V1 since it is really faithful to the point and shoot design philosophy of the 1 series. I see the V1 as a half baked "expert" model that didn't go far enough. The Z1 will fill that gap later together with the f0.7 lenses for which Nikon submitted a recent patent.

As I wrote before, the J1 is perfect when you need a camera that is small and delivers 99% focused and perfectly exposed images (it does expose significantly more accurately than the D800 or any other DSLR I have used). The video image quality is very good too.

My wife and I have been using it to shoot images of our recently born little baby girl, and it works very well for that.

Does the system have potential from an image quality standpoint? Well if you check DxOMark you'll realized that its image quality today is very close to that of the originial Canon 1Ds up to ISO400, which back then was considered to be medium format territory.

5 years ago, nobody thought that 4/3 had any potential, now some people compare the image quality of the Olympus OMD at ISO 6400 to that of the Canon 5DIII... so it should be pretty obvious that the sensor of the 1 series is large enough in the mid to long term.

Cheers,
Bernard
Title: Re: Nikon V1 - yawn :(
Post by: RobSaecker on June 04, 2012, 09:08:03 pm
The Z1 will fill that gap later together with the f0.7 lenses for which Nikon submitted a recent patent.

That'll certainly be an interesting development, if it's ever actually released.

Idle curiosity, Bernard, have you ever tried stitching with the J1?
Title: Re: Nikon V1 - yawn :(
Post by: michael on June 04, 2012, 10:12:42 pm
It's not a bad camera at all, for what it is. I'm pretty happy with mine as an alternative to a P&S. But yeah, they could certainly do a better job if they wanted to appeal more to enthusiasts.

Michael, do you have a source for your comment about discounts? I don't see anything other than the rebates that have been in effect for a while now; I see no mention on Nikon's site or dpreview, for instance.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1058&thread=41685583

Title: Re: Nikon V1 - yawn :(
Post by: BernardLanguillier on June 04, 2012, 10:30:32 pm
Idle curiosity, Bernard, have you ever tried stitching with the J1?

Euh... good question... I probably haven't tried it for that.

Frankly, I keep the J1 in A mode, max possible aperture and auto-ISO all the time, even the thought of going through the menus to change to M mode, which remains preferable for panos, is tiring...  ;)

The only 3 buttons I use frequently on the J1 are:
- On/off
- Photo shutter
- Video shutter

I also use the replay button from time to time out of curiosity, but the images are basically often enough perfect that the need to validate that the image was correctly captured is in fact secondary for the kind of images I capture with this camera.

That makes for a very relaxing shooting experience, the closest I have found to iPhone photography.

Babies are also attracted by bright objects... and the white J1 does capture her attention perfectly!  ;)

Cheers,
Bernard
Title: Re: Nikon V1 - yawn :(
Post by: ErikKaffehr on June 05, 2012, 02:55:29 am
Hi,

In my humble view a camera should be small enough to carry in a pocket or be big enough to be cradled in the hand. I'm somewhat sceptical about small cameras with "big lenses".

My take on the Nikon V1 is that if it sells, it's just fine. If it does not than Nikon wasted some money.

I'm a Sony user, but I didn't buy into NEX either. The main reason is lenses.

In my view that future lies in mirrorless, once EVFs are good enough.

A final point is that I'd say that almost any camera is good enough, if no big prints are made. 

Best regards
Erik




Sorry, Nikon missed the boat. The people who have been paid by Nikon to say what a great system this is can now leave the building. Yes, it has super AF. Big deal. It needs a whole lot more to appeal to knowledgeable enthusiasts, starting with a decent (larger) sensor.
Title: Re: Nikon V1 - yawn :(
Post by: OldRoy on June 05, 2012, 06:29:44 am
LL is somewhat late to the party on this subject!

My own take is that the CX sensor format has been created with an eye to the not so distant future. The "expert" model will, I feel, be released before too long. Likewise some more interesting lenses. At which point the "pah - the sensor's too small" comments which abounded on the range's release, will look silly.

I didn't buy one either (OM-D instead) however I think this is going to get interesting. Not least because the inbuilt PD focusing is a development we'll be seeing a lot more of soon.

Roy

Title: Re: Nikon V1 - yawn :(
Post by: Tom Frerichs on June 05, 2012, 09:14:25 am
I have the J1, and I'm reasonably happy with it. As Michael pointed out, I have to check the silly mode dial before I shoot.

I bought it for four reasons:

This is not an enthusiast's camera; it's barely a step above a P&S. On the other hand, it's not as expensive as the various mirrorless cameras that do appeal to an enthusiast. and it is made by a company that gets most of their revenue from the camera business.

Like Bernard, I tend to let the camera make all the decisions...although I have a habit of shooting in aperature-priority mode.

Of course, without this camera in hand I wouldn't have the interesting photograph of a traffic accident that happened right in front of me nor would I have the shot of the kid waiting for a bus on a 90 degree day dressed in a fleece hoodie, gloves, and WWII-era gas mask.  (Still wondering what was going on there.)

The J1 satisfies my needs, but paraphrasing a famous Jack Benny skit, if it came down to "Your money or your camera," I wouldn't be thinking about it.
Title: Re: Nikon V1 - yawn :(
Post by: Keith Reeder on June 05, 2012, 09:57:23 am
Big deal. It needs a whole lot more to appeal to knowledgeable enthusiasts

Do you really think you're qualified to speak for that whole segment of the photographic community, John?

I'm a Canon user, and - I like to believe - a reasonably knowledgeable enthusiast (one of the constituency you choose to speak for). For its intended purpose and market, I think the V1 is a cracking little thing.

Title: Re: Nikon V1 - yawn :(
Post by: Paulo Bizarro on June 06, 2012, 04:39:14 am
I have used the J1 for a while, it is basically a "no worries while shooting" camera. Set in Av or P mode, auto-ISO, and shoot away. The autofocus is amazingly fast and accurate. Of course this is not a camera to please the "advanced" photographer, who likes dials and direct control to settings. This is a camera to target the "P&S" croud, while providing significant improvement in two areas where P&S normally fail miserably: image quality (larger sensor) and autofocus. The 10-30 lens is actually very good.

Incidentally, in my country (Portugal) the J1 is now heavily discounted, about 200 Euros cheaper with the kit lens, than at launching date. At around 340 Euros, it is very good value!
Title: Re: Nikon V1 - yawn :(
Post by: Ben Rubinstein on June 06, 2012, 11:09:54 am
Has anyone else wondered just how ancient Michael is if he remembers the V1 flying bombs? :p
Title: Re: Nikon V1 - yawn :(
Post by: Tom Frerichs on June 06, 2012, 12:38:35 pm
Has anyone else wondered just how ancient Michael is if he remembers the V1 flying bombs? :p

That's not fair.  I remember that Gutenberg invented the printing with moveable type, but old as I am, I wasn't there personally to witness the event.

Tom Frerichs
Title: Re: Nikon V1 - yawn :(
Post by: michael on June 06, 2012, 02:04:33 pm
I don't remember them as I was an infant in London during the Blitz. But we did lose family members to the bombs. These things become family history and are not that easily forgotten.

Michael
Title: Re: Nikon V1 - yawn :(
Post by: Rob C on June 06, 2012, 02:20:16 pm
Has anyone else wondered just how ancient Michael is if he remembers the V1 flying bombs? :p



He's just a kid: I remember seeing gliders being towed behind 'planes and heading east...  not everyone came home.

Then there were the doodlebugs that sounded just like a flying motorbike and you were fine so long as they kept running.

Rob C
Title: Re: Nikon V1 - yawn :(
Post by: Robert55 on June 07, 2012, 12:36:26 pm
...

Then there were the doodlebugs that sounded just like a flying motorbike and you were fine so long as they kept running.

Rob C

doodlebug is actually the British [nick]name for the V1.
The first attack using a V1 was on 13 june 1944, a week after D-Day, which saw the use of gliders.
Now back to camera's ...
Title: Re: Nikon V1 / X-Pro1?
Post by: Pelao on June 08, 2012, 08:02:09 am
Michael
Thanks for the quick review.

I don't remember you personally commenting much on the Fuji X-Pro1. Have you played with it?
Title: Re: Nikon V1 - yawn :(
Post by: michael on June 08, 2012, 08:39:28 am
I never did get a chance, and that's why Nick Devlin did our report.

One was couriered to me in Mexico but Fedex screwed up and I never go it. (It's a long story).

By the time it got sorted out I was on my way back to Canada and working on other projects.

I'll wait for the X-2 Pro. :-)

Michael
Title: Re: Nikon V1 - yawn :(
Post by: Pelao on June 08, 2012, 02:16:05 pm
I never did get a chance, and that's why Nick Devlin did our report.

One was couriered to me in Mexico but Fedex screwed up and I never go it. (It's a long story).

By the time it got sorted out I was on my way back to Canada and working on other projects.

I'll wait for the X-2 Pro. :-)

Michael

You mean you're not even a little curious....?  ;D

I'm looking at the Nex-7 and the X-Pro1 for my next non - DSLR purchase. If it's the X-Pro, it will be the first purchase in a very long time not influenced by your 'real-world' comments.
Title: Re: Nikon V1 - yawn :(
Post by: michael on June 08, 2012, 04:09:00 pm
Too many camera, not enough time. :-)

Michael
Title: Re: Nikon V1 - yawn :(
Post by: Pelao on June 08, 2012, 04:11:15 pm
Too many camera, not enough time. :-)

Michael

Of course. In any case, thanks for the ones you do get to use and review.

Title: PDAF in sensor and stepper motor AF is spreading
Post by: BJL on June 08, 2012, 06:45:03 pm
Not least because the inbuilt PD focusing is a development we'll be seeing a lot more of soon.
Good call: Canon just announced a DSLR (650D) with PDAF sensors built-in to the main sensor, for use in Live View and video shooting. And in addition to adopting that idea pioneered in the Nikon J1 and V1, Canon is launching a new series of lenses using stepper motors for AF, which work better with CDAF, following Olympus and Panasonic with that idea.

I think this kills the idea that new technologies like this can be locked up for long with patents, and hope to see them spread through the whole mirror-less "EVIL" sector. At that point, the flipping mirror camera gets very close to obsolete.

And can a Canon EVIL camera system be far away now?