Nikon V1 Black Digital Camera W/ 10-30mm Lens

Underated great little camera

By MARK  Apr 4, 2013

Pros: Small(ish), fast AF,

Cons: low(ish) Mp, bokeh shots difficult.

The 10.1 mp is sufficient and the picture quality is very good. The viewfinder is excellent, better than my Fuji x-e1 (in my opinion) which has double the pixels. The lcd is also excellent and gives a very clear picture. Battery life is excellent at ...500 plus shots on one charge. The pictures taken are quite small, 10mb for 12bit raw, 5mb for jpeg and very easy to work with in all the usual editing packages (I use Lightroom). The raw pictures taken contain a surprising amount of dynamic range and lots of detail can be extracted. Jpegs contain lots of detail and do not contain any noticeable artifacts. White balance and exposure metering on this camera is excellent and accurate in pretty much all conditions. Autofocus speed (phase detect) is outstanding in all but very poor light, where contrast detect focusing kicks in which is a little slower but still accurate. 10, 30 and 60 shots per second modes impressive in use. The electronic shutter mode can be set to be silent in operation, giving really discreet shooting when needed. Mechanical shutter mode is quiet and sounds cool. The camera does not have a flash, but low light performance is pretty good; not as good as CSCs with bigger sensors and no where near as good as the fuji x-e1, but reasonable quality pictures can be taken in low light (1600 iso is probably the limit for usable pictures). There are some innovative features on this camera. The smart photo selector setting is very useful, taking shots from a half press of the shutter to full press and giving a selection of shots for consideration (raw plus jpeg can be captured in this mode). Motion snapshot is not for me. The general picture taking mode I have set to aperture priority, set through the menu (my usual shooting mode) and aperture is set through the small jog lever to the right of the camera. Movie mode gives good video footage but I am not a videographer. This camera is great to just take out and shoot. I don't worry about changing settings and general fiddling, I can take the dslr out if I want that. I suppose it's sort of a freeing experience shooting with this camera since the temptation of fiddling with settings has been removed. I purchased this little fella (the V1)for £230 from Amazon marketplace and have to say, what a barging. This camera was never worth Nikon's release price of over £800 but at the current prices it's a bargain. If you want a camera to take out and just shoot, I would recommend this camera. If you want a camera with lots of buttons and settings (without going into menus), then this camera may not be for you. Read more Less