As I have already explained in my “how to choose a tripod” article, the cost of a tripod system can vary between $50-$1,200 (sometimes even more than that, depending on what head and other accessories you choose to buy). I definitely did not want to spend a lot of money on a secondary tripod, so I set my budget to under $150 with a head and started my search. My main criteria were: ability to support lightweight cameras to a pro-level DSLR with a non-telephoto lens (up to 10 pounds maximum load), a ballhead with a quick-release plate, under 3-4 pounds of total weight, easy to use and with a solid build. After I narrowed down my search to a couple of tripods, I ended up choosing the Oben AC-1410. I felt that it was a good fit for my needs, because it had everything I wanted and the price was well under my set budget.

Product Specifications and Features

Other Features:

1. Tripod legs features reversible 1/4″-20 and 3/8″-16 screw to fit almost any head
2. Spring-loaded counterweight hook at the bottom of the center column
3. Leg warmers on two legs mitigate the effects of extreme heat & cold and provide grip
4. Two included Allen keys attach to a tripod leg, so you’re always ready to tighten components
5. Padded carry bag provides a snug fit for the tripod/head combination and features two heavy-duty zippers, an interior pocket with a zipper, and a shoulder strap
6. Even with the head attached, at 21″ long the retracted system fits into a carry-on bag
7. Adjustment locks keep legs at the chosen angles
8. Center column is grooved to prevent rotation
9. Angled rubber feet

Assembly and Use

The Oben AC-1410 tripod is packaged nicely in a box that says “You’re On a Steady Ground”:

Inside the box, you will find a very useful padded carrying bag that contains the tripod and a few other accessories:

Here is how the tripod looks when collapsed (measuring 21″ long), with a quick release plate:

One thing I found a little strange, was the fact that Oben decided to only provide warmers on two legs instead of all three. Not sure why they did that, but I won’t complain, since most tripods of this class do not have any warmers. Another nice feature I rely on a lot is the level that is provided right on top of the legs:

This kind of level is very useful (my Gitzo has it too), especially when shooting panoramas. If one level is not enough, the tripod head has three more levels to work with, which allows for much more precise positioning of the camera. The tripod legs are solid, although the very bottom legs felt a little wobbly when extended. Extending the legs is pretty straightforward – just flip three locks at a time and extend each section.

In general, I do not recommend tripods with center columns, because they only de-stabilize the setup. That’s why I am not too excited about it on this tripod either. Unfortunately, the tripod only extends to 50″ without the center column. I’m 5’7, so I had to use the center column a few times when I did not feel like I wanted to bend my neck too much. With the center column extended, the tripod can reach 60.4″ and once the camera is mounted, it is right about my eye level. The center post has a hook on the bottom for additional stabilization, so you can hang a light bag or some light weight on it:

The ballhead is a breeze to work with – it only has a single knob that is used for securing the head position. The base of the ballhead can be easily rotated for panoramas. The quick release system is also nicely designed. It won’t let the plate come off until the second smaller lever is squeezed, which is very useful for situations where you might accidentally release the plate without holding the camera. Here is the top of the quick-release ballhead:

The tripod is definitely sturdy enough to hold a DSLR. Here is my Nikon D700 with the Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G lens mounted on the tripod:

And here is a side by side comparison with the Gitzo Systematic 3-section carbon fiber tripod that I have:

As you can see, compared to the high-end Gitzo tripod, it is a fairly compact setup with much thinner legs and a smaller and lighter ballhead.

Overall, I really liked this tripod, because it does everything I need it to do at a very affordable price. If you have not purchased a tripod yet and you need something for day to day photography, the Oben AC-1410 could be a great tripod to start with.

Pricing and Where to Buy

The Oben AC-1410 4-section aluminum tripod with BA-0 ballhead is available at B&H and other online and local stores for $119.95, which is a steal.

Overview

This is an in-depth review of the new Sony SLT-A77 digital SLR camera that was announced together with the Sony SLT-A65 in August of 2011. I had a chance to test both cameras, along with a number of Sony / Zeiss lenses for the Sony mount, while reviewing the Nikon 1 camera system in late 2011. While I concentrate most of my gear reviews around Nikon cameras and Nikkor lenses, I got really excited about these Sony cameras after seeing the press release and decided to try them out.

Sony A77

I have been enjoying shooting with DSLRs for quite some time now and while I am very happy with the cameras and lenses I use, I just think that we have not been seeing major breakthroughs in new DSLR cameras. New cameras pack more resolution, faster frames per second, better video features and other bells and whistles, but nothing innovative and revolutionary that changes the way we shoot. With Sony entering the DSLR market rather late in 2006 (after acquiring Konica Minolta), it was tough to compete against the long-established Canon and Nikon cameras. Sony introduced a few DSLRs with great features at a competitive price and secured itself the #3 market share spot in DSLR sales globally, mostly with lower-end DSLR camera bodies. With a rather slow adoption rate and a limited choice of lenses and accessories available, the company quickly realized that its only way to challenge the big two was to innovate. In August of 2010, Sony announced its first “Single-Lens Translucent” (SLT) cameras – the Sony A33 and A55. While the concept of a translucent mirror is not new (in fact, Sony calls it “translucent” for marketing purposes, because it is actually supposed to be “pellicle mirror”), Sony was the first to design it to work with an electronic viewfinder. Its first SLT cameras were a success, so Sony decided to embrace the technology and take it a step further with the new Sony A77 and A65 cameras. Going forward, we will most likely not be seeing any more DSLR cameras from Sony, since its management already expressed commitment to this new breed of cameras. We should be seeing more cameras from Sony with translucent mirrors, including high-end, full-frame models.

The Sony SLT-A77 was kindly provided by B&H – the largest photo reseller in the world that I personally use to buy my photography gear.

1) Sony SLT-A77 Specifications

Main Features:

1. 24.3 MP best-in-class resolution
2. 2nd Generation Translucent Mirror Design directs light to both the image sensor and the Phase Detection AF sensor simultaneously
3. World’s first OLED viewfinder with 2359K dots for amazing resolution and high contrast ratio for incredible depth
4. Rugged, magnesium alloy body
5. Three-way tilt/swivel LCD screen
6. In-camera HDR mode
7. Bilt-in GPS
8. 1200-Zone exposure metering
9. Built-in Flash
10. Continuous shooting at up to 12 frames per second
11. Full HD Movie modes at 60p, 60i, or 24p with full exposure control
12. Full-Time Live View in LCD or EVF
13. Multi-frame NR, Panorama and 3D Panorama Modes
14. ISO 100-16000 sensitivity
15. Upgraded BIONZ® image processor
16. In-camera image stabilization
17. 19-point AF with 11 cross-type sensors
18. AF Micro Adjust Capability
19. 3 inch LCD monitor with 921K dots
20. Dynamic Range Optimizer mode
21. Advanced sensor Anti-Dust Technology.
22. Face Registration and Detection
23. Up to 1/8000 shutter speed
24. Shutter rated for 150,000 actuations

Click here to download the above photograph in 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper format.

As you can see, the camera packs some very impressive features when compared to Canon and Nikon rival products. Not only does the Sony A77 have the highest APS-C sized sensor on the market today, but it also comes with great built-in features such as built-in GPS (without the need to use external GPS devices), in-camera image stabilization, a plethora of image capture and image editing modes, high-resolution OLED viewfinder and much more.

Detailed technical specifications for the Sony A77 are available on Sony.com.

2) Camera construction, handling and ergonomics

Unlike the square and flat design of the previous-generation Konica / Sony DSLRs, the Sony A77 features a brand new, modern look with a stylish design. The top of the camera is a lot more round and curved, giving a sleek look to the camera on the front, while the curvy back resembles some of the Canon DSLRs. Camera front has a simplistic layout with one preview button, lens release button and focus mode dial. A large AF illuminator (located on top, between the grip and the lens mount), along with an IR receiver (located on the grip) are also visible on the front of the camera.

Like other higher-end DSLRs, the Sony A77 features two dials, one in front and one in the back for controlling exposure and some camera settings. The design of the On/Off switch, along with the two medium-sized buttons located right next to it (exposure compensation and ISO), is clearly borrowed from Nikon DSLRs. Along with a few other buttons on the top, the camera also features a top-panel LCD, which can be illuminated at night by pressing the light bulb button to the right of the LCD. The typical PASM dial with a bunch of camera modes and presets is located to the left of the camera. The typical Sony Alpha hotshoe sits together with a silver microphone in the center:

Speaking of the hotshoe, I found the proprietary Sony Alpha hotshoe to be inconvenient and annoying. I do not understand why manufacturers feel they need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to simple things like this. While there is an adapter available to convert the Alpha hotshoe to a regular one, I did not get a chance to obtain this adapter and hence could not use the camera with my PocketWizard radio transmitters to trigger off-camera flash.

The back of the camera is loaded with plenty of customizable buttons, along with a joystick for menu and image navigation. To be honest, I found the button layout to be poorly designed. I had a rough time getting used to the buttons, even after two months of shooting with the camera. I am perfectly fine with where the Menu button is, but the rest are just all over the place. The joystick is another poor design choice in my opinion. I always had a rough time using joysticks on cameras – the joystick that Nikon uses on their camera grips is horrible and I never liked the joystick that Canon uses on its DSLRs either. I prefer Nikon’s big multi-purpose navigation button and Canon’s rotary dial. The design, layout and navigation of the Sony A65 are much better, in my opinion.

My negative experience with the button layout and the joystick, however, was compensated by the beautiful three-way tilt/swivel LCD and the stunning OLED viewfinder. The articulated LCD has a very unique design that gives the freedom to rotate the LCD pretty much any way you want. You could set the LCD up backwards for protection, or like a traditional LCD. You could tilt it to the side or flip it down or you could even set it up to display what you are shooting right in front of the camera. The camera is smart enough to flip the image on the LCD, so you won’t find yourself looking at yourself or at your subject upside down. As I have already pointed out, the OLED viewfinder is absolutely stunning. After being so used to an optical viewfinder that always shows the same thing with very little customization options, my experience with Sony’s high-resolution electronic viewfinder (EVF) was beyond positive. In fact, the OLED viewfinder was the very first thing that got me glued to the Sony A77 right after I got the battery charged. I have had some experience with electronic viewfinders before, but none of them even remotely compare to this one. It is mind boggling to think that this OLED viewfinder has 2.4 million dots – compare that to 921,000 dots used on the 3 inch LCD screen! But wait, it doesn’t stop there. The OLED viewfinder size that Sony used on the A77 has a 0.73x magnification; compare that to the 0.63x magnification on the Nikon D7000 or 0.70x magnification on the Nikon D3s. So not only do you get a beautiful-looking rending of live view and images inside the viewfinder, but it is also bigger than what most other DSLRs have.

The beauty of the electronic viewfinder when compared to an optical one is that you see everything live. With an optical viewfinder, as soon as you turn on live view, the viewfinder is blocked by the mirror. You look at the live and customizable data inside the viewfinder, frame your shot and take a picture. No loud mirror slap, no extra vibrations, you only hear the camera shutter. If you are used to a DSLR, this is a totally different experience. I won’t go into much detail about advantages and disadvantages of an electronic viewfinder and how it compares to an optical viewfinder (maybe in a separate article), but one thing I am confident about – electronic viewfinders are the future. Yes, there are some serious limitations with EVF today, especially when using them in low light situations, but I believe it is a matter of time until those issues are addressed.

Another key advantage of the A77, in my opinion, is built-in GPS. Instead of ripping people off like Nikon and Canon are doing with GPS-ready connectors that require cables and expensive external GPS devices, the Sony A77 has a GPS unit integrated into the camera. Although I often need the GPS functionality to save places I have been to, I simply refuse to use an external GPS device on my Nikon cameras. We have seen point and shoot cameras from both Canon and Nikon with integrated GPS and yet they are blatantly refusing to add it to DSLRs. We get it, they want to sell us more accessories that get frequently get lost and broken. But how long will it continue? Thanks to pioneers like Sony, not long, or they will start losing their customers. Some people say GPS drains batteries. True, it does. But if you do not want to use it, simply turn it off and the problem is solved. That is not an excuse for not including it in the camera.

Speaking of batteries, the 7.2V InfoLithium battery is rated at 470 images when used with the OLED viewfinder and 530 images with the LCD monitor. This is expected, considering how many more pixels there are on the OLED screen compared to the LCD. However, these numbers are quite poor when compared to the Nikon D7000, which is rated at a whopping 1050 shots.

The Sony A77 measures 142.6x104x80.9mm, which is bigger than the Nikon D7000 that measures 132x103x77mm, however, it only weighs approximately 650 grams, which is 40 grams lighter than the D7000. The camera is fully weather sealed and has a solid magnesium alloy body protecting the front and the back of the camera (top is plastic). As for external camera connectors, the Sony A77 has plenty of them, from flash sync to USB and HDMI.

3) Camera Sensor and the new BIONZ Processor

As of January, 2011, the Sony A77 has the world’s highest resolution APS-C (23.5 x 15.6mm) sensor. With a whopping 24.3 Megapixels, its pixel density is very high, with a pixel size of just 3.89 microns. A high resolution sensor is generally a good characteristic of a camera, because it can resolve a lot of detail, but high pixel density equates to small pixels, which ultimately result in more noise, or low Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR). Now this last sentence is subject to heated debates among the photography community lately. I have written a detailed article on the benefits of a high resolution sensor, explaining why small pixels are not necessarily bad. In summary, if you were to take two cameras, one with a high resolution sensor (smaller pixels) and one with a lower resolution sensor (larger pixels), the former might look very close to the latter in terms of noise, once the image is normalized to the same resolution or print size. That’s because noise is reduced during the down-sampling process, as explained in detail here. While the camera with a lower resolution sensor has higher ISO sensitivity modes, the high resolution camera has sharper images when down-sampled (assuming the lens can resolve enough detail). The pros and cons list expands to many other areas such as file sizes, processing speed, storage requirements, etc.

So, where does this all put the 24.3 MP Sony A77 sensor? Is it truly advantageous to have such a high resolution APS-C sensor, or did Sony make a mistake by reigniting the megapixel war? My initial reaction to the high resolution sensor was rather negative, because I knew that it would impact the low-light performance and the speed of the camera. At the same time, I could not wait to try shooting 24 megapixel landscape images at ISO 100. After a detailed lab and outdoors analysis, along with comparison to other cameras, I came to the conclusion that the sensor performance is surprisingly good. True, high ISO shots do look very noisy at pixel level above ISO 1600, but once you down-sample images to around 16 MP (which is what Nikon D7000 has), noise is significantly reduced and does not look bad. It is still noisier than the Nikon D7000 at 16 MP, but not much worse. This is something I expected to see, because Nikon has a lot more experience with noise reduction at high ISOs and its image processing pipeline is clearly superior at anything above ISO 800.

The real advantage of the A77 sensor, however, is its low ISO performance. Images at ISO 100 look stunning, with plenty of details, colors and dynamic range to play with. As long as you are using good lenses that can resolve so much detail, you will not be disappointed with the sensor performance. With so much resolution, this is the camera that will make landscape and fashion photographers happy.

Please note that I only shot RAW with the Sony A77 and processed all images in Lightroom and Photoshop, with the latest version of Camera RAW. I noticed that Sony applies some heavy noise reduction on JPEG images that results in detail loss, so I switched to RAW pretty much from the start.

To make the crazy 12 FPS speeds possible with the 24.3 sensor, Sony had to beef up its image processor. The A77 ships with an upgraded Sony BIONZ image processor that not only does a great job in keeping up with such enormous throughput needs, but also allows for in-camera image processing and tweaking of final output. You can even combine multiple exposures for HDR and 2D / 3D Panoramic effects. Furthermore, the BIONZ processor is fast enough to cope with 1080p high definition video at 60 frames per second – something neither the Nikon D4, nor the Canon 1D X can do, being top-of-the-line DSLRs.

4) Ease of Use

I have never used a Sony Alpha before and I did not know what to expect in terms of the learning curve. To my surprise, despite some functional differences and slight annoyances here and there (like the direction of the front and rear dials is reversed compared to Nikon and cannot be changed), I found the Sony A77 quite easy to use and operate. Its default settings were already good enough for my photography needs and aside from changing image format from JPEG to RAW and playing with a couple of other settings, I was quite happy with the results. The menu system has a horizontal structure like Canon DSLRs and there are only a couple of sub-menus to deal with. Everything in the menu is descriptive and easy to understand, nothing like the cryptic menu system on the Olympus E-PL3.

The camera responsiveness is good, although I had a few occasions when the menu system, image playback and EVF to LCD switching were lagging behind a little. Although updating camera firmware helped with the lag a little, it did not seem to completely eliminate it. Quickly rotating the dials on the front and the rear of the camera is still rather laggy.

5) Autofocus Performance and Metering

With 19 focus points and 11 cross type sensors, the Sony A77 autofocuses quite well in most situations. I tried a number of different Sony and Zeiss lenses on the camera and all (except one Sony lens that had a severe back-focus problem) seemed to perform reliably well when photographing portraits and landscapes. Phase-detect AF was mostly quick and accurate, even in some low-light situations. I occasionally got out of focus images here and there, but the hit/miss ratio was not anything excessive; I would say on par with what I typically get with Nikon DX cameras. I found the implementation of continuous AF and subject tracking quite poor, on the other hand, especially when compared to Nikon DSLRs like the Nikon D7000. I tried to take some pictures of my kids running around in a park in AF-C (continuous) mode and the camera had a tough time keeping focus (using 50mm and 85mm prime lenses). Many images came out blurry and it felt like the camera had some sort of a focus lag when photographing fast-moving subjects. I have never experienced this sort of erratic autofocus behavior with any Nikon DSLRs, including entry-level models like Nikon D5100. Other than that, AF seemed to be more reliable in continuous mode with slower subjects.

With an amazing speed of 12 fps, you would think the Sony A77 could challenge the big guys like Nikon D3s. Well, note quite. You can only get 12 fps when shooting in Continuous Priority AE mode, which puts some limitations on lens aperture. For continuous AF to work at 12 fps, lens aperture needs to stay wide open or the phase detect sensor might not receive sufficient light. On a traditional DSLR, lens aperture is always wide open and the lens only stops down right before taking the picture. This is a necessary measure, especially when shooting at high frame rates in continuous mode. The same applies to the Sony A77, except it cannot quite keep up with such fast speeds and therefore the lens aperture must stay wide open. If you want to shoot continuously without this limitation, then you could either switch to AF-A / Manual Focus modes, or you could switch to Standard Continuous mode that is limited to 8 fps. On top of this, unlike DSLR cameras that let you see the action through the optical viewfinder in between shots, the Sony A77 blocks the view inside the viewfinder by playing back previous images. This is problematic for high speed action photography, so sports and wildlife photographers should be aware of this limitation. Still, 8 fps with continuous AF is a very impressive speed.

Now let’s talk about one more factor that impacts the performance – camera buffer. With huge 24.3 MP files and high frame rates, it would be difficult for the camera to maintain those high speeds due to the sheer amount of memory that is required to hold so many images. Even the best SD cards today are not fast enough to keep up with such speeds. When shooting in RAW at 12 fps, the buffer fills up in a little over a second and then crawls to extremely slow speeds, roughly 1 fps. It then takes about 12-15 seconds for the buffer to transfer all the images to the card. Switching to smaller JPEG files and slower speeds helps, but it is still pretty clear that the buffer size on the camera is too small for such high resolutions and fast speeds.

As for metering, I had a mixed experience with the A77. When it comes to matrix metering, one great thing about Nikon DSLRs is their exposure consistency, even in changing light conditions. Consistency is a key word here, because the Sony A77 does not seem to have it when photographing people. I had a few cases when I shot the same subject with the same background twice in multi-segment metering mode (which is equivalent to matrix metering on Nikon) and ended up with two different exposures (one good and one underexposed). I did not see the same problem when photographing landscapes though – multi-segment metering did a pretty good job and I rarely had to resort to exposure compensation.

6) Built-in Image Stabilization

One distinct feature of the Sony Alpha cameras that differentiates them from Nikon and Canon DSLRs, is their in-camera image stabilization. I won’t go into details on advantages and disadvantages of in-camera image stabilization vs lens image stabilization, but one thing for sure – it works well, especially when using fast aperture prime lenses. Canon and Nikon DSLRs only offer lens image stabilization, so you have to watch your shutter speed when using non-IS lenses like Nikon 50mm f/1.4G. You do not have to worry about that when using any lens on the Sony A77. Sony calls its image stabilization technology “Steady Shot” and it can be turned on or off for capturing images or video through the camera menu system. The in-camera image stabilization is silent and you do not hear the same hum you normally hear on Nikon lenses when image stabilization is engaged.

7) Movie Recording

The Sony A77 has very impressive video features that will definitely appeal to videographers. With a high-quality 1080p full HD video, the camera is capable of recording videos at 24p, 60i and 60p modes in AVCHD / MP4 (MPEG-4 AVC H.264) format. There is a separate “Movie” silver video record button on the camera used for starting and stopping video recording. Movies are limited to 29 minutes and the battery should last for up to three hours of continuous movie recording. Full exposure control is available in movie control mode, but continuous/full-time autofocus does not work in that mode. If you want full-time autofocus while shooting videos, then the only option is to use one of the PASM modes instead, at which point the camera takes over the exposure control of videos.

8) Sweep Panorama Mode

While I personally would not trust the camera to take panoramic shots for me (I do it manually through post-processing and panoramic software, as detailed in my “panoramic photography tutorial“), I tried using the sweep panorama mode on the Sony A77 and I was surprised by how well it worked. It took me a few tries to successfully do a full panorama, but once I figured it out, it was an easy process to follow. Images were stitched well and I did not see any major artifacts or stitching problems in the final images. Here is a sample panorama taken with the camera:

Looks like the sweep panorama mode is not designed for serious work, because the resolution of the panoramas is limited to 12416×1856 in wide mode, 8192×1856 in standard mode (for horizontals) and 2160×5536 in wide & 2160×3872 in standard (for verticals). That’s pretty low, considering the native resolution of 6000×4000. On top of that, panoramas are also captured in processed JPEG format, limiting the options for tweaking the image output in post-processing. I prefer to shoot my panoramas frame by frame in RAW format, then use panoramic software for stitching. That way not only do I get more control over panoramas, but I also get a lot more resolution in the final image. In one case, I was able to stitch 11 vertical images in one row and got a massive panorama with a 22450×5890 resolution, which is almost twice bigger than what the automatic sweep panorama can deliver.

9) Built-in GPS

The built-in GPS on the Sony A77 works very well. I had it turned on at all times when shooting outside and it provided accurate GPS results on every image. If you are interested in seeing exactly where each image in this review is taken, the GPS data is available as part of EXIF data. Latitude, longitude, altitude, direction, GPS timestamp and other related GPS data is automatically embedded into each image as part of metadata.

In my opinion, all cameras should have the GPS capability. It is always nice to be able to go back and locate the exact spot from where the picture was taken. Sometimes I look at some old pictures and want to find where I took them, but because I did not put any notes on exactly where I physically was, I cannot travel back to find the location. In addition, with all the GPS-ready applications such as Lightroom and photo sites like Flickr, Picasa and others, GPS data is getting more and more useful. Some websites even provide a Google map of where the photo was taken when a picture is uploaded.

10) Lens Compensation

Another very useful feature for JPEG shooters out there, is the ability to reduce lens issues such as chromatic aberration, distortion and vignetting right from the camera. This is a very similar feature as Lightroom’s Lens Corrections module. The camera stores profiles of lenses in camera firmware and when a new lens is released, Sony will push the lens profile via a firmware update. If you shoot RAW and use third party software like Lightroom, chromatic aberration and distortion corrections will be discarded upon import, because the data is stored as metadata (similar to Nikon’s RAW/NEF files). However, if you enable vignetting correction (Sony refers to vignetting as “shading”), then those corrections are done at the image processing pipeline, which means that corrections are directly written into the RAW data. Considering that Adobe releases lens profiles for Sony cameras and lenses, this sort of irreversible correction on RAW level might not be a good idea – you do not want vignetting to be corrected in two different places. Therefore, I would keep “shading” correction off.

11) Dynamic Range

At ISO 100, the dynamic range the Sony SLT-A77 offers is very good. Although I did not perform any scientific tests to measure the dynamic range, I tried to recover some shadow details from a high contrast RAW image sample and results were comparable to what I got with the Nikon D7000. DxOMark ranks the Sony A77 at #10 among all cameras with 13.2 EVs, putting it ahead of many medium format cameras like Phase One P40 and P65 Plus (with Pentax K-5 and Nikon D7000 topping the chart).

Don’t forget that dynamic range decreases as you increase ISO, so if you want to be able to recover the maximum amount of details, you should be shooting at ISO 100. This is especially important for HDR photography – always shoot at base ISO of 100 and use a tripod.

The built-in Dynamic Range Optimizer (DRO) is very similar to Nikon’s Active D-Lighting – it only applies to JPEG images. Since I shoot RAW, I had DRO turned off. If you shoot JPEG, it is probably best to keep DRO on for the best results. As for the HDR tool, I personally did not use it either, since I believe that HDR should be properly done through HDR software instead. HDR effects can only be applied to JPEG images as well.

Let’s see how the camera performs at low and high ISOs, click the next page of the review.

ISO Performance

Camera Comparisons

Conclusion

Product Specifications and Features

1. Pneumatic control lever, adjusts seat from 20-30″ high.
2. Padded vinyl seat cover
3. Chrome plated cylinder
4. Strong high impact nylon base for stability
5. Seat: 14″ (36cm) diameter
6. Base: 25″ (63cm) diameter
7. Height: 20-30″ (51-76cm)

Assembly and Use

The unit came in a single box comprised of three parts: the seat, the base and the pneumatic cylinder that connects the seat to the base. Assembling the stool literally took me less than 30 seconds – I just had to pull everything out of the box / plastic bags and connect the three parts together. The process was self-explanatory and I did not need any instructions. Once I assembled the stool, I then noticed the instruction card on the floor. Interestingly, it showed a detailed assembly of the chair, which was clearly not necessary:

The top part was already done (seat cushion, mounting plate with screws) and the bottom part already had the feet attached. Not sure why they have these instructions, since most of the steps were already taken care of.

The Impact posing stool is lightweight, durable and does a great job at comfortably seating people for studio and indoors shots. Its air-cushioned mechanism works well for adjusting for different heights, although I found it to sag a little with heavier clients, when fully elevated. It does not take up much space for transportation, so Lola and I always take it with us when photographing clients in a remote location.

Some image samples when using the posing stool:

Pricing and Where to Buy

The Impact Posing Stool is priced at $58.95 and is available at B&H Photo Video.

Product Specifications

1. Minimum Height: 40″ (102 cm)
2. Maximum Height: 13′ (4 m) as light stand, 9 ft (2.7 M) as boom stand
3. Closed Length: 40″ (102 cm)
4. Footprint Diameter: 36″ (91 cm)
5. Weight: 6 lbs (2.7 kg) >Maximum Load: 5 lbs (2.3 kg) as light stand, 3 lbs (1.4 kg) as boom stand
6. Attachment Size: 5/8″ stud with 1/4″-20 threaded top
7. Accepts Wheels: Yes
8. Air Cushioned: No

Packaging, Assembly and Use

The Impact Multiboom unit came in a box and was nicely packaged and protected. Best of all, it came in one piece!

Other booms I have dealt with in the past consisted of multiple parts that needed to be put together, which is inconvenient, especially for travel and transportation. I occasionally do corporate photography (primarily headshots) and it is always nice to have gear that is both easy to transport and easy to assemble. With this product, there is nothing to assemble. You just loosen one handle, pull the top section all the way up, set the boom arm in a horizontal position, lock it where you need it and voila!

The nice thing about this setup is that when you do not need the boom arm, you can still use the stand as a normal light stand. That’s why the call it “multiboom” light stand, because it can do both. Here is a the top of the boom arm, compared to a standard light stand (Left: standard light stand, Right: multiboom):

The Impact Multiboom light stand is sturdy enough to hold large reflectors, speedlights and other accessories. I would not recommend it for anything heavier than a couple of pounds, although you could use it to hold heavier gear if you do not extend the arm too long. You should use it with care when mounting speedlights and other expensive equipment – a sandbag or two would definitely help to keep it from falling. I have been using the multiboom for holding reflectors and it handles them very well, even when I use my large 72″ oval reflector or the Lastolite TriGrip:

Sample portraits with Multiboom in use with a reflector

If you have not done much studio work, you might be wondering why a boom such as the Impact Multiboom can be a useful tool for portraiture. While you can use it for many different things, I will demonstrate how a reflector mounted on a boom can make a difference in portraiture with a single light. For the image below, I used a Nikon SB-900 speedlight with a Westcott 43″ umbrella mounted in a shoot-through configuration on a light stand. I set the light in a standard configuration, angled at about 30-45 degrees to the left of Lola and used a white background behind her. I positioned the light pretty close to her (3-4 feet away) and here is the result:

While Lola’s face is illuminated well, there is a very dark shadow present on the right side of her head (her left). That’s what you would normally see when using just one light.

To brighten up the shadows, I mounted a reflector on the Impact Multiboom and placed it to the right of her. In this configuration, the main light to the left illuminates her face, while the reflector reflects some of the light and reduces the shadows, acting as “fill light”. Here is the result:

See how much better the image looks now? That’s just a simple reflector doing the magic. The deep dark shadows look much brighter and smoother now and Lola’s face is getting more even light from both sides. To make it look even better, I placed the reflector even closer to Lola and took another shot:

Now the light is more or less evenly distributed across Lola’s face and the shadows look much softer and nicer.

Could I have done this with two lights? Absolutely. But I would have needed another speedlight + umbrella, and I would have had to play with flash power on the second light to get the same fill result. I would have needed more equipment and more time for something this simple.

Summary

I have been using the Impact Multiboom Light Stand and Reflector Holder for some studio work during the last couple of months and I am very pleased with it. It is relatively sturdy, lightweight, portable and inexpensive – exactly what I have been looking for when using reflectors/flags and other lightweight accessories while photographing models and clients in a studio. It is a good quality multi-purpose product that requires no assembly and at its $79.95 price, it is one of the cheapest boom kits you can find on the market today.

Pricing and Where to Buy

The Impact Multiboom Light Stand and Reflector Holder is priced at $79.95 and is available at B&H Photo Video.

Overview

Just a few days before Nikon D4 is announced at CES, I decided to write a review of the Nikon D3s DSLR that I have been shooting with for the past two plus years. I have been putting off writing the Nikon D3s review for a while now, because I wanted to first review all the gear that I have been testing lately, while the gear I use every day for my photography has been just sitting at the end of my long “to-do” list. The Nikon D3s has received numerous awards, including “best product / camera” from various reputable organizations and websites. And it did for a reason – its image quality, high ISO performance, superb autofocus, fast speed and rich features make it a phenomenal camera – truly one of the best cameras in the world.

Nikon D3s

I clearly remember the day I ordered the D3s. For a while we were quite happy with our two cameras – the Nikon D700 and the D300. I would normally shoot with the D700 and Lola was doing most of her work, including food photography, with the D300. As Lola started to shoot more weddings and events, I was often left with the D300. After a short while, neither Lola nor I wanted the D300 anymore. Yup, we both got spoiled by the full-frame sensor. Realizing that we would eventually fully move to full-frame, I got rid of all DX lenses by then and using lenses like the Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G or the standard Nikon 50mm f/1.4G on DX just did not feel right. By then, Lola was already in love with the Nikon D700 + 50mm f/1.4 combo and she would simply refuse to use the D300 with the 50mm lens. With her wedding work and my passion for nature photography, it was clear that we did not need another DX camera. That’s when Nikon announced the D3s. After seeing image samples and camera specifications, it did not take long before both of us realized that we needed it for our work.

As you might have already seen on “Our Gear” page, I call the Nikon D3s “a serious camera for serious photographers”. Ever since the Nikon D3s was announced back in 2009, it has been dominating the camera world with its impressive high ISO performance. It has been numerously called “the low-light king” by many well-known photographers and reviewers, because it delivers outstanding image quality with an unmatched high ISO performance. For over two years now, there has not been any camera on the market that can do what the D3s can. A serious camera indeed! But the Nikon D3s is not for everyone. With its high price tag, bulky body and heavy weight, it is often hard to justify it. Lola does not like the D3s, because of its large size and heavy weight, especially after long and tiring wedding events. In this review, I will talk about my overall experience with the D3s and provide feedback on its strengths and weaknesses.

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1) Nikon D3s Specifications

Main Features:

1. Nikon-original FX-format CMOS Sensor: Newly engineered for striking image fidelity and low-noise, optimizing pixel size and count in a 12.1-megapixel sensor to produce extraordinarily rich files.
2. Continuous Shooting Up to 9 FPS: Secure exacting moments in time with an expanded buffer, allowing continuous capture of up to 82 JPEG (fine) or 36 14-bit NEF (RAW) images.
3. One-button Live View with Two Shooting Modes: Two modes for studio or remote shooting—Tripod Mode offers 27x magnification for precise focus confirmation.
4. Dynamic Integrated Dust Reduction System: Ultrasonic process combats the accumulation of dust on the optical low-pass filter, safeguarding image quality.
5. Fast, Accurate 51-Point AF System: 4 Dynamic modes and 15 cross-type sensors deliver AF precision and razor sharpness.
6. Scene Recognition System: Referencing an onboard image database, teamed with RGB metering, SRS enhances exposure and white balance evaluation and improves AF speed and accuracy.
7. Nikon Picture Control: Four preset options and 9 customizable settings provide personalized style control.
8. Dual CF Card Slots with Overflow, Backup and Copy Options.
9. Approx. 4,200 Images per Battery Charge.
10. Low Noise ISO Sensitivity from 200 to 12,800: Renowned low-noise performance at 12,800, plus expanded settings to an astounding ISO 102,400 (equivalent) and ISO 100 (equivalent).
11. HD Video Capture: Record smooth 24 fps HD video, leveraging low-noise D3S image quality along with high fidelity stereo sound capability.
12. 3-Inch Super-density 921,000-dot VGA LCD Monitor: D3S monitors are individually calibrated during assembly to assure accuracy.
13. Nikon EXPEED Image Processing: Drives breathtakingly rich image fidelity, low-noise and fast image processing.
14. 1,005-Pixel 3D Color Matrix Metering II: Nikon-pioneered RGB metering includes color information to intelligently determine more accurate exposures.
15. Rugged and Precise Magnesium Alloy Construction: Effectively protected from invasive dust, moisture and electromagnetic interference with a self-diagnostic shutter mechanism tested to exceed 300,000 cycles.
16. 100% Viewfinder Coverage
17. Virtual Horizon Graphic Indicator

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Detailed camera specifications can be found on Nikon USA.

2) Camera construction and handling

The one area where one would expect to have no complaints whatsoever on the D3s is camera construction. With its magnesium-alloy camera frame and fully weather-sealed body, the Nikon D3s is designed to be abused. Like many other pros, I heavily rely on these features, whether I am shooting landscapes in extremely cold, hot, humid or dusty conditions, or photographing wildlife in rain and snow. My Nikon D700 took a lot of beating, but my D3s took even more. And I expect it to live for many more years to come. The phrase “build like a tank” easily applies to the D3s, enough said.

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Handling-wise, the D3s is superb, with the exception of two issues. The first one is its heavy weight and bulk. As I have already pointed out, Lola does not like the D3s because of this reason alone. At over 1.2 kilos without a battery, the camera is very heavy, approximately 20% heavier than the D700. While 20% might not sound like a lot, once you add a pro lens and a flash, it all adds up. This difference is even greater with batteries, because the EN-EL4a is twice the size and weight of the EN-EL3e. Size-wise, the Nikon D3s is also much taller than the D700 and is almost as big as the D700 with a battery pack. On the positive note, the Nikon D3s is slightly smaller and lighter than the D700 with a battery grip and two batteries. So if you already have a Nikon D700 and you are comfortable using it with the MB-D10 grip + batteries, then you will find the Nikon D3s to be overall easier and lighter to handle. The second issue has to do with button placement on the back and the top of the camera. While I absolutely love the extra display with three buttons on the rear of the camera, the “QUAL” button (stands for “Quality”, changes image format) right next to the ISO button is a very bad design mistake in my opinion. I had a few accidents, when I found myself shooting TIFF or JPEG, just because I accidentally changed my image format while attempting to change ISO in low light, with my gloves on. On one occasion, my whole day of photography went to waste because I managed to set the camera to “JPEG BASIC” without knowing it. Nikon should make these buttons programmable, or at least allow us to turn them on and off, so that this does not happen. Sure, I could have taken my gloves off and could have used a flashlight, but it was -10F at night! I did not want to use a flashlight, because my friend was standing right next to me and taking a long exposure. I really wish this “QUAL” button went on the top left dial of the camera, just like on the D700, and replaced the useless “L” (Function Lock) button that I have not been using at all. Other than these annoyances, I find the rest of the camera layout to be great. I often use the rear buttons without even looking at them, which speaks for the superb ergonomics of the professional Nikon D3s camera. By the way, Nikon has been paying Italian designers to design every pro camera since 1980, including the original Nikon D3; Nikon D3s has the same camera body design and very similar button layout as the D3.

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The Nikon D3s balances very well with all heavy professional Nikkor lenses like Nikon 14-24mm, Nikon 24-70mm and Nikon 70-200mm – you just grab the lens with the left hand and the camera with the right. When using smaller lenses like the Nikon 50mm f/1.8G, holding the camera can be a little awkward, because the lens is too light. In those situations, I use my left thumb, index and middle fingers to hold the lens, while resting other fingers on the camera body and using my left palm to support the camera. My right hand goes on the grip, with my thumb holding the “AF-ON” button that I use for focusing and my index finger on the shutter. The grip is superb and very comfortable.

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The dual card slots on the D3s are extremely useful. When shooting important events, I just use two identical CF cards and configure the camera to write photos to both cards simultaneously. This way I know that the photos are protected against potential failure and it also helps to keep my clients confident that their photos won’t be lost due to card failure. Dual card slots used to be considered a “pro-only” feature in the past – even the Nikon D700 does not have dual card slots (which I believe is a huge disadvantage). However, Nikon has been adding dual card slots to all new semi-pro and pro cameras lately (even the Nikon D7000 has dual card slots), so we should be seeing this feature on most Nikon cameras in the future. When shooting wildlife and landscapes, I typically use the “overflow” method, which writes to one card and then switches to the next one when it gets full.

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Just like all other top-of-the-line Nikon DSLRs, the Nikon D3s does not have a built-in camera flash. While this is done primarily for better weather-sealing, it is a definite disadvantage if you have been using a built-in flash in emergency situations or perhaps as a master to trigger an off-camera speedlight. It does not come with an AF assist lamp either, so focusing in extremely dark environments can be more problematic.

3) Camera Sensor

The Nikon D3s has a modified full-frame sensor from the legendary Nikon D3 camera. While the size and the number of pixels remained the same, Nikon found a way to push high ISO performance to new limits with the D3s. As can be seen from the next page of the review, it is roughly 1-1.5 stops better at high ISOs, which is incredible. Shooting at ISO 6400 on the Nikon D3s gives better results than shooting at ISO 3200 on the original Nikon D3 and Nikon D700 cameras! As I have already pointed out, the Nikon D3s has been the king of low-light photography since it was announced in 2009. However, this incredible high ISO performance comes at a cost – the Nikon D3s still has the same 12 Megapixel sensor as the original Nikon D3. Considering that most new cameras from other manufacturers now have at least 16-18 MP, 12 Megapixels is definitely on the low side (the new Sony A77/A65/NEX 7 cameras have a 1.5x crop factor sensor with a whopping 24 MP!), so Nikon needs to start catching up with a higher resolution sensor. Sure, many of us rarely need more than 12 MP, but for photographers like me that shoot nature and events it would be nice to have one camera that sort of sits in the middle, having a good balance of resolution and high ISO performance.

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4) Autofocus Performance

Just like the Nikon D3 and D700 DSLRs, the Nikon D3s sports the industry-leading Multi-CAM 3500FX 51-point AF system with 15 cross-type sensors. AF is incredibly quick and accurate, even in low-light situations. Both Lola and I have shot many different events with the D3s in mixed light environments and the AF system just never disappoints. You can customize AF behavior through the camera custom settings menu and the Nikon D3s provides lots of options to control and tweak the AF system. You can choose between Single and Continuous Servo modes and use continuous mode in combination with four different AF driving modes: single point, dynamic-area, 3D tracking and Area AF. You can choose from 9 to 51 AF points and you can even set focus tracking delay, which holds focus for a specific amount of time when the subject moves out of the focus area. Speaking of which, I use the Nikon D3s for bird photography and I am amazed by how well subject tracking works. I can set my camera one way for perched and slow birds, while for quick action and birds in flight I modify my AF and subject tracking settings and I end up with a lot more in-focus images. Overall, this AF system is so good, that many Canon sports and wildlife pros that got sick of the plagued AF system on their Canon 1D ended up switching to the Nikon D3 and D3s cameras.

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The 100% FX viewfinder coverage is very nice, because I know that I get exactly what I am looking at, whereas with the D700, I have to plan for the extra space that the viewfinder does not show. While this is not a critical feature, it is always nice to know that “what you see is what you get”. The large FX viewfinder on the Nikon D3s simply cannot be compared to DX viewfinders, making it much easier to see if your subjects are out of focus – yes, it is that much bigger in size.

All in all, and I know most pros will agree with me on this, Nikon’s 51-point AF system is still the best on the market today.

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5) Metering and Exposure

What about metering and exposure accuracy? While the Nikon D3s features the older 1,005 pixel RGB metering sensor (the Nikon D7000 has a 2,016-pixel RGB sensor), I personally like it better than the new one. As I have described in my Nikon D7000 review, the new 2,016-pixel RGB sensor can be tricky to work with, especially if you are used to the 1,005 pixel RGB sensor. The new face recognition patterns, along with the new complex sensor system seem to prioritize skin tones more, often resulting in over-exposure. I mainly shoot in 3D Matrix metering mode (about 90+% of the time) and occasionally in spot and center-weighted metering modes. All three have given me great exposures on the D3s in normal lighting conditions. When the light is tricky, I usually use exposure compensation to get the result I need. There are times when I dial +1 EV and shoot like that for a while and there are times when I dial -1 to -2 for the best exposure. But that does not happen very often – the metering sensor on the D3s is usually very accurate.

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6) Shooting Speed (FPS) and Battery Life

The Nikon D3s is Nikon’s flagship sports and wildlife camera, which is why it has the fastest speed Nikon can deliver on a pro body. At 9 fps you can capture action and when using DX lenses, you can get up to 11 fps (I can’t imagine anyone would shoot with a DX lens on a full-frame body, because resolution is halved). In comparison, the Nikon D300s and the Nikon D700 can shoot 6 and 5 fps, respectively (without a grip; up to 8 fps with the MB-D10 grip). The battery lasts up to 4,200 shots on a single charge, which is more than 4 times what the D700/D300s batteries can do. I also found the EN-EL4a battery to perform very well in extremely cold conditions, whereas the EN-EL3e battery used by the D700/D300s does not last very long in temperatures below 32F.

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7) Movie Recording

I remember when Nikon announced the D3s, the videography community was rather disappointed with its maximum 720p video mode. Canon was leading the game by putting 1080p in all of its new cameras, including many of the entry-level models, while Nikon was stuck with the same puny 720p 24fps AVI that it pioneered on the Nikon D90 DSLR. Granted you can shoot 720p with really high ISO levels and get incredible videos at night, the 720p limit just does not cut it anymore. If you are looking for a good video camera, you will be disappointed – even the new mirrorless Nikon 1 V1 camera beats the D3s in video capabilities. The reason why Nikon could not deliver high resolution videos was related to the older EXPEED processor that it used on the Nikon D3s – the processor just could not handle that kind of bandwidth. Nikon finally delivered 1080p with the EXPEED 2 processor and we will surely be seeing 1080p on the upcoming Nikon D4 as well, which will feature Nikon’s latest EXPEED 3 processor.

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8) Dynamic Range

The dynamic range on the D3s is excellent, but not quite as good as some of the newer sensors from Nikon, including the Nikon D7000 DX sensor. While you can surely recover plenty of details from base ISO images if your scene is exposed correctly, some of the great dynamic range capabilities are lost because the Nikon D3s does not have a native ISO 100 capability (dynamic range is largest at base ISO and is reduced as ISO is increased). For this reason, DxOMark rated Nikon D3s only 38th in its “dynamic range” rating chart, with Pentax K-5 topping the list and Nikon D7000 coming second. In contrast, the Nikon D3x (which is considered to be a landscape camera) is rated #3, because it offers much greater dynamic range at native ISO 100. But again, take all this with a grain of salt – you can still recover lots of data from D3s 14-bit RAW NEF files. Nikon found a way to go back to ISO 100 without compromising ISO performance, so all new cameras are manufactured with ISO 100 as base ISO. The new Nikon D4 will also feature native ISO 100, so its rating in the DxOMark charts should be very impressive once the results are published. Don’t be disappointed with this D3s dynamic range score though – the overall score from DxOMark still puts D3s 6th on the list, right along medium format cameras from Pentax and Phase One. That’s because by losing on dynamic range, it regains its ground on low-light ISO charts, where it ranks #1.

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My field tests have proven that shooting between ISO 200 and 800 is quite acceptable without much loss of dynamic range. Anything beyond ISO 800 will decrease dynamic range dramatically, especially beyond ISO 1600. So when I shoot landscapes (often hand-held), I try to stay below ISO 800-1600. When photographing people and wildlife, on the other hand, I do not hesitate to crank up ISO all the way to 6400 and sometimes even to 12,800. There is some loss of detail at ISO 12,800 though.

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See the next page to see more examples of D3s’ ISO performance, along with comparisons against Nikon D700 and D300.

ISO Performance

Camera Comparisons

Conclusion

1 Nikkor VR 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6

The Nikon 1 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6 VR is a consumer-grade telephoto lens designed for the new Nikon 1 camera system to complement the Nikon 1 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 VR kit lens. With its focal length of 30-110mm on the Nikon 1 CX sensor (2.7x crop factor), its coverage is equivalent to a 81-297mm lens in 35mm format. The variable aperture of f/3.8-5.6 means that its maximum (largest) aperture changes between f/3.8 to f/5.6, depending on the focal length. It is a very lightweight lens, and similar to interchangeable lenses from other compact mirrorless camera manufacturers, the lens is collapsible, which also makes it quite compact for travel and transportation.

In this review, I will provide a thorough analysis of the Nikon 1 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6 VR lens, along with image samples and comparisons against other Nikon 1 lenses such as Nikon 1 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 VR and Nikon 1 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 VR.

1) Lens Specifications

Main Features:

1. A 3.7x telephoto zoom lens that covers the 30–110-mm range of focal lengths
2. A compact, lightweight telephoto zoom lens that offers superior portability with a retractable lens mechanism
3. Equipped with vibration reduction (VR) mechanism
4. Support for a wide variety of scenes, from portraits to sports scenes
5. Metal mount adopted for increased durability
6. Design elements, colors, and materials are carefully chosen for the camera body design
7. Two ED (Extra-low Dispersion) glass elements

Technical Specifications:

1. Mount Type: Nikon 1
2. Focal Length Range: 30-110mm
3. Zoom Ratio: 3.7x
4. Maximum Aperture: f/3.8
5. Minimum Aperature: f/16
6. Format: CX
7. Maximum Angle of View: 29°40″
8. Minimum Angle of View: 8°20″
9. Lens Elements: 18
10. Lens Groups: 12
11. Optical Conversion Factor: 2.7x
12. Compatible Format(s): CX
13. VR (Vibration Reduction) Image Stabilization: Yes
14. Diaphram Blades: 7 (rounded diaphram opening)
15. ED Glass Elements: 2
16. Autofocus: Yes
17. Internal Focusing: Yes
18. Minimum Focus Distance: 3.3ft.(1m)
19. Filter Size: 40.5mm
20. Accepts Filter Type: Screw-on
21. Lens Barrel Retraction Function: Rotation of zoom ring (manual)
22. Dimensions: (Approx.) 2.4×2.4 in. (Diameter x Length), 60×61 mm (Diameter x Length)
23. Weight: (Approx.) 6.2 oz. (175g)
24. Supplied Accessories: LC-N40.5 Snap-on Front Lens Cap, LF-N1000 Rear Lens Cap, HB-N103 Bayonet Lens Hood

2) Lens Handling and Build

If you have used Nikon Nikkor lenses in the past, you will not be disappointed with the new Nikon 1 lenses. The Nikon 1 30-110mm VR is built very well, despite its relatively compact size (for a telephoto lens). The base of the lens barrel seems to be made with the same tough plastic Nikon uses in its DSLR lenses. The thick rubber zoom ring with a plastic base has pretty good traction to easily zoom in and out with fingers and sits in between two thin metal rings, one of which has focal length markings on it. The top of the lens has another metal ring, which is there for aesthetics. The lens employs a retractable lens mechanism, similar to the 1 Nikkor VR 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6, which reduces the size of the lens to approximately 61mm and locks it in place when fully retracted. Here is a size comparison between 1 Nikkor lenses:

The barrel is fully extended at 110mm focal length, which almost doubles the length of the lens, so it is definitely nice to be able to collapse it when not using it. Nikon put plenty of thought into the new Nikon 1 lens line-up and developed the CX mount from scratch. Compared to the current Nikon DX/FX mounts with 8 contacts, the Nikon 1 lenses and cameras have a total of 12 contacts, which allows for more communication between Nikon 1 cameras and lenses. As a result, many of the lens functions are now controlled by the camera, so all the extra buttons and switches have been eliminated. Even the manual focus ring has been removed to simplify lens operation. There is only one button on the lens located on the zoom ring and it serves a dual purpose – it is used to collapse or extend the lens and to turn the camera on. I really like that the camera turns on when the lens is extended – one less thing to do when taking pictures (sadly, collapsing the lens does not turn the camera off). Another positive outcome of the new CX mount with extra contacts is the ability to upgrade lens firmware through the camera, which has never been possible before. Now you see an extra “L” firmware in addition to the traditional “A” and “B” under “Firmware version” in camera setup menu, which shows what firmware the lens is running on. Nikon has already identified and resolved a serious problem with Vibration Reduction on the Nikon 1 30-110mm VR lens and released a firmware update.

Just like the rest of the Nikon 1 lenses, the Nikon 1 30-110mm has a metal mount, which is surprising, because lenses of this caliber from Nikon typically have plastic mounts. This is great news for the Nikon 1 system owners, because it means that all future CX lenses will most likely have metal mounts as well, even on cheap zoom lenses. On the other hand, the rubber gasket on the lens mount that Nikon has been putting on all new AF-S lenses is absent, which could make the lens and camera more susceptible to dust. As of now, none of the Nikon 1 system components (including all current lenses) are weather sealed. On a positive note, I have used the Nikon 1 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6 VR in cold, windy and very dusty environments and I did not have any issues with dust specks making their way into the camera or the lens.

Despite its compact size, the Nikon 1 30-110mm sports impressive optical features such as Vibration Reduction (VR), Super Integrated Coating (SIC), Internal Focusing (IF) and Silent Stepping AF Motor (STM). Vibration Reduction is Nikon’s term for image stabilization, which is a very useful feature in low light situations, where camera shake and slow shutter speed can cause images to be blurry. Super Integrated Coating helps reduce lens flare and ghosting. Internal focusing means that the lens barrel does not change when the lens focuses. And finally, Silent Stepping AF Motor is a brand new motor specifically developed for the CX lenses, which allows for super fast and near-silent autofocus operation.

The Nikon 1 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6 VR has a complex optical design consisting of a total of 18 lens elements (in 12 groups), 2 of which are aspherical elements. Aspherical elements greatly reduce lens aberrations such as Spherical and Chromatic Aberration and significantly increase lens sharpness. Even the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G does not have a single aspherical element by comparison.

Unlike the Nikon 1 10-30mm VR kit lens, the Nikon 1 30-110mm VR comes with a plastic “HB-N103″ lens hood. Nikon packed the lens hood with the lens for a reason – telephoto lenses are typically much more prone to ghosting and flare than wide-angle lenses. See more info about this under “Ghosting and Flare” section further down below.

3) Autofocus Performance and Accuracy

As I have already pointed out in my Nikon 1 V1 Review, the new autofocus system on the Nikon 1 system is phenomenal when compared to other mirrorless competitors. It is very fast and accurate, thanks to the hybrid autofocus system that Nikon specifically developed for the Nikon 1 cameras. Hybrid autofocus is a combination of phase and contrast detect AF that work together to obtain quick and accurate focus. For the much faster hybrid autofocus operation, Nikon had to develop a brand new AF lens motor called “Silent Stepping AF Motor” (STM). Compared to the “Silent Wave Motor” (SWM) that Nikon uses on its latest AF-S lenses, STM is much quieter and quicker.

I had a very positive experience with autofocus performance and accuracy of the Nikon 1 30-110mm lens. It truly does acquire focus quickly, silently and most importantly, accurately. I shot several hundred images with the 30-110mm lens and I had a hard time finding images that were out of focus. Large depth of field due to the small 2.7x crop factor sensor surely plays a role here, but I have shot with point and shoot cameras with even smaller sensors before and managed to get a lot more out of focus images.

4) Vibration Reduction

The Image Stabilization / Vibration Reduction technology found on the Nikon 1 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6 lens is very similar to the VR technology found on modern DSLR lenses – it is very effective when shot at slow shutter speeds. There are, however, some differences in the way VR is deployed on the new mirrorless cameras versus DSLR lenses. First, VR does not engage on DSLR lenses unless the shutter button is half-pressed (or AF-ON pressed). This is not the case with the Nikon mirrorless cameras – when VR is turned on in camera setup, it is constantly on. You do not have to half-press the shutter button – it will always be active. This seems to be a flaw in the Nikon 1 system design, because having VR turned on constantly will have its toll on battery life. Second, VR is no longer controlled through lens switches, but rather from inside the camera menu (as reported earlier). Lastly, for some strange reason, both the Nikon 1 J1 and V1 cameras were shipped with VR turned on in “Active” mode. This is rather strange, because the active mode is supposed to be used when a person stands on a moving platform (inside a car, on a boat, etc). Not sure if this is a firmware issue, but it would be interesting to find out exactly why Nikon decided to do that. Despite these differences and reported issues, Vibration Reduction works great. I would leave it on “Normal” mode within the camera setup and only turn it off when mounting the camera on a tripod.

5) Lens sharpness, contrast and color rendition

As I reveal in my sharpness tests in the subsequent pages of this review, the performance of the Nikon 1 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6 VR is very good throughout the focal length of the lens and its aperture range. You can see many examples of lens sharpness taken in a controlled environment in the next page, along with comparisons against other lenses.

A quick note on lens sharpness that generally applies to all Nikon 1 Nikkor lenses. Due to the small size of the sensor and the nature of compact optics, an aperture of f/5.6 is rather small and often represents peak lens performance. While diffraction negatively effects images on DX and FX sensors above f/8-f/11, it greatly impacts lens performance at anything smaller than f/5.6 on CX sensors. In the case of the Nikon 1 30-110mm lens, its maximum aperture of f/5.6 on the long end means that you are at its peak performance when it is wide open and stopping down the lens only decreases image quality. This is yet another negative consequence of a small sensor camera design.

6) Bokeh

Isolating subjects from the background with a small-aperture zoom lens is a challenge due to its larger depth of field. This becomes even a more difficult task on Nikon 1 cameras, because of their small 2.7x crop factor sensors. While depth of field and the size of background highlights depend on multiple factors such as focal length, aperture, camera to subject distance and subject to background distance, the quality of Bokeh largely depends on lens optics. If you are able to get close to your subject while keeping the busy background further away from the subject, you can get a decent-looking bokeh, as long as you are shooting at maximum aperture and zoomed in a little. The 1 Nikkor VR 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6 lens is equipped with a rounded 7-blade diaphragm, which helps in obtaining circular bokeh highlights. Here are a couple of examples of bokeh when shot at large apertures:

Once Nikon releases fast f/1.2-f/1.8 prime lenses, I will look into their bokeh performance in more detail.

7) Vignetting

As for vignetting, the Nikon 1 30-110mm has the most amount of vignetting wide open at the wide end at 30mm, which stays about the same at 40mm, then gradually decreases in the mid range and eventually almost disappears at around the 80mm mark. Stopping down the lens to f/5.6 or f/8.0 (above 80mm) will significantly reduce the effect vignetting, as expected:

RAW shooters will see more vignetting in their images, because vignetting is automatically reduced on JPEG images by camera firmware. If vignetting is an issue for you, it is easy to fix in post-processing, so I would not worry about it. Adobe has not yet added a lens profile for the Nikon 1 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6 VR into Lightroom or Camera RAW, but we should be seeing it in upcoming updates pretty soon. Once it is added, you will be able to get rid of vignetting with a single click through the Lens Corrections sub-module in Lightroom / Camera RAW.

8) Ghosting and Flare

As I have already pointed out, telephoto lenses are typically much more prone to ghosting and flare than wide-angle lenses. Although the Nikon 1 30-110mm VR features Super Integrated Coating, I would not use it without a lens hood or shoot it against the sun. You will especially see a significant decrease in contrast when the sun is outside the frame and sun rays reach the front element of the lens – a very normal occurrence on all telephoto lenses.

9) Chromatic Aberration and Distortion

Chromatic aberration is controlled well, with the highest levels of CA at 30mm and 110mm marks. There is a modest amount of barrel distortion on the widest end at 30mm, which flattens at around 40mm. From there it then switches to a very slight pincushion distortion all the way to 110mm. I would not worry about chromatic aberration or distortion, since you can easily remove them in Lightroom or Camera RAW after a lens profile comes out.

Let’s now move on to the good stuff – Sharpness tests. Select the next page below.

10) Sharpness Test

Some technical junk:

1. White Balance: Auto, changed to “Custom”: 4750 Temp, +18 Tint in Lightroom
2. ISO: 100
3. EXIF information is preserved in the images
4. Lens was mounted on Nikon 1 V1 Camera and Gitzo tripod
5. Focusing was performed with manual focus assistance
6. High ISO NR: Off
7. Long Exposure NR: Off
8. Active D-Lighting: Off
9. Image Format: RAW
10. Lightroom settings: Default settings
11. Lightroom export: sRGB JPEG Quality 80
12. Testing was performed at f/3.8, f/4.0, f/5.6, f/8.0. f/11.0 and f/16.0 apertures
13. Nothing was moved during testing

11) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 30-110mm VR @ 30mm Center Frame

The wide-open performance of the Nikon 1 30-110mm at 30mm in the center is pretty good – sharpness and contrast do not really improve when stopped down:

Stopping down to f/5.6 does not make a difference and we start to see some loss of resolution at f/8.0:

Diffraction is pretty bad at f/11 and much worse at f/16:

The Nikon 1 lenses should not be used at such small apertures – I would not recommend shooting beyond f/8.

12) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 30-110mm VR @ 30mm Corner Frame

Compared to the center, the corners start out comparably weaker:

Stopping down to f/5.6 significantly improves sharpness, but still relatively weak. Peak corner sharpness is reached at f/8:

Some loss of resolution at f/11 due to diffraction and much more at f/11:

A little bit of green fringing is visible in the corner crops. Because the Nikon 1 lenses show so much diffraction at f/16, I won’t provide any more samples above f/11.

13) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 30-110mm VR @ 40mm Center Frame

Zoomed in to 40mm still produces sharp images wide open, with peak performance between f/4 and f/5.6:

We see some loss of resolution at f/8.0:

And even more at f/11:

14) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 30-110mm VR @ 40mm Corner Frame

Corners at 40mm are still pretty weak:

With the best performance around f/8.0 again:

And noticeable loss of resolution at f/11:

15) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 30-110mm VR @ 60mm Center Frame

We start to see some loss of sharpness at 60mm in the center:

16) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 30-110mm VR @ 60mm Corner Frame

Corner performance improves a little bit at 60mm, but still needs to be stopped down to about f/5.6:

17) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 30-110mm VR @ 80mm Center Frame

Very similar results as 60mm at 80mm in the center:

18) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 30-110mm VR @ 80mm Corner Frame

With much better performance in the corners wide open at 80mm:

19) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 30-110mm VR @ 110mm Center Frame

At 110mm the maximum aperture is f/5.6, which is also its sweet spot:

Diffraction is again affecting both sharpness and contrast at f/11:

20) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 30-110mm VR @ 110mm Corner Frame

Corners seem to be the best at around f/8.0 at 110mm:

The Nikon 1 30-110mm VR seems to perform well at short focal lengths in the center, with f/5.6 being its sweet spot. Once zoomed in to 60mm, there is a slight loss of resolution. As for corners, they start out weak at 30mm and need to be stopped down to f/8.0 for best results. The corner sharpness greatly improves as you zoom in, especially above 80mm.

One important fact to note here, is that due to the smaller size of the camera sensor and its pixels, all 1 Nikkor lenses, including the Nikon 1 30-110mm VR are sharpest at around the f/5.6 mark. Anything smaller than that, especially above f/11 severely impacts image quality due to diffraction. This differs from the typical f/8-f/11 aperture range you might be used to on DSLR lenses. If you shoot in Aperture Priority or Manual modes, try not to go smaller than f/5.6, if you want to get the sharpest image. It is OK to stop down to f/8 to get more depth of field, but definitely not a good idea to go any further. You will just end up degrading image quality too much.

Let’s see how the lens compares to other 1 Nikkor lenses.

Compared to Nikon 1 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 VR

Let’s see how the Nikon 1 30-110mm VR compares to the Nikon 1 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 VR kit lens that comes with the Nikon 1 V1 / J1 cameras. Since there is only one focal length (30mm) that overlaps between these lenses, the below comparison only shows one center and one corner frame comparison.

21) Nikon 1 30-110mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-30mm VR @ 30mm Center Frame

As expected, the Nikon 1 30-110mm performs much better at 30mm, even wide open (Left: Nikon 1 30-110mm VR, Right: Nikon 1 10-30mm VR):

Sharpness difference is very apparent, especially when both lenses are stopped down to f/5.6:

Again, diffraction kicks in at f/8 and the image quality starts to degrade on both, although the 30-110mm still looks a world better:

Stopped down to f/11, both lenses perform rather poorly, but the 10-30mm looks much worse in comparison:

Again, I won’t be providing any f/16 crops, since image quality is very poor at the minimum aperture.

22) Nikon 1 30-110mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-30mm VR @ 30mm Corner Frame

Let’s see how the corners compare wide open. Surprisingly, the Nikon 1 30-110mm in the corners does not perform as good in comparison, so the differences are pretty small:

At f/5.6 the Nikon 1 30-110mm looks better and sharper:

Stopped down further to f/8, the Nikon 1 30-110mm improves even more, reaching its sweet spot. Again, it looks better than the 10-30mm lens:

And the same is true for f/11, although diffraction definitely takes its toll:

23) Nikon 1 30-110mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-30mm VR Conclusion

Both the Nikon 1 10-30mm VR and the Nikon 1 30-110mm VR lenses are for two different needs and they are meant to compliment each other – the 10-30mm lens covers wider angles and mid-range, while the 30-110mm lens covers telephoto. As you can see from the above image crops, the Nikon 30-110mm VR is much sharper than the 10-30mm lens at 30mm in comparison. This is expected, because it is a specialized lens for telephoto needs and it should perform well at longer focal lengths. As for vignetting, the Nikon 10-30mm vignettes less at 30mm in comparison, especially in the extreme corners, but don’t forget that it is also at f/5.6 vs f/3.8. Ghosting and flares are not handled well by the 30-110mm VR due to the nature of telephoto lens optics. AF speed seems to be about the same on both lenses. As for physical differences, the Nikon 1 30-110mm is a much longer lens compared to the 10-30mm, especially when fully extended.

Compared to Nikon 1 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 VR

One interesting lens that Nikon introduced for the Nikon 1 mount is the Nikon 1 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 VR PD-ZOOM, also known as “1 NIKKOR VR 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 PD-ZOOM”. This superzoom is the most expensive Nikon CX lens and it is also the biggest/bulkiest of the four. Compared to the 30-100mm lens, the Nikon 1 10-100mm is equipped with a new “Voice Coil AF Motor” (VCM), which allows zooming in and out by using the power zoom switch on the lens. Its focal length is equivalent to a 27–270mm lens in 35mm format and it is also equipped with VR (plus a bunch of nice optical features from DSLR lenses). Comparing these two lenses was rather difficult, because there is no fixed position of focal lengths on the 10-100mm lens and I had to move slightly, then take a picture and check its focal length. As a result, the comparison image crops might not have the same field of view.

24) Nikon 1 30-110mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 30mm Center Frame

The Nikon 1 30-110mm seems to perform better at 30mm, even wide open (Left: Nikon 1 30-110mm VR @ f/3.8, Right: Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ f/5.3):

With both stopped down to f/5.6 the sharpness difference is reduced, but the 30-110mm still seems to be a little sharper in comparison:

Again, diffraction kicks in at f/8 and the image quality starts to degrade:

Stopped down to f/11, both lenses perform rather poorly:

Again, I won’t be providing any f/16 crops, since image quality is very poor at the minimum aperture.

25) Nikon 1 30-110mm vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 30mm Corner Frame

Let’s see how the corners compare wide open. Surprisingly, the Nikon 1 30-110mm in the corners does not perform as good in comparison at its maximum aperture of f/3.8:

Stopped down to f/5.6 the Nikon 1 30-110mm gets much sharper, but still looks weaker in comparison:

Stopped down further to f/8, the Nikon 1 30-110mm improves even more, reaching its sweet spot. But it is still worse than the 10-100mm in comparison:

At f/11, diffraction reduces resolution on both lenses and they start to look about the same:

26) Nikon 1 30-110mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 40mm Center Frame

The sweet spot of the Nikon 1 10-100mm lens is at 30mm. Let’s see what happens when the lens is zoomed to 40mm. Again, the wide open performance of the 30-110mm is a little better:

Nothing changes at f/5.6 – the 30-110mm is still sharper:

Stopping down just reduces resolution:

And at f/11 both lenses look about the same:

27) Nikon 1 30-110mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 40mm Corner Frame

Let’s take a look at the corners at 40mm. Once again, the Nikon 10-110mm shows better extreme corner performance wide open (1 stop of difference between the two):

Stopping down to f/5.6 does not make much difference:

Although by f/8 both lenses start looking about the same:

And even more so at f/11:

28) Nikon 1 30-110mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 60mm Center Frame

At 60mm the center performance of both lenses seems to be about the same:

Nothing changes at f/5.6:

And at f/8.0:

Plenty of diffraction at f/11 on both:

29) Nikon 1 30-110mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 60mm Corner Frame

Zoomed in to 60mm, the corner performance of the Nikon 1 10-100mm clearly weakens. Now both lenses are starting to look about the same wide open:

Differences are further reduced at f/5.6, although the Nikon 1 10-100mm has some green fringing visible now:

About the same at f/8:

Again, losing plenty of resolution at f/11:

30) Nikon 1 30-110mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 80mm Center Frame

Moving on to 80mm, lenses look about the same:

31) Nikon 1 30-110mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 80mm Corner Frame

As we get closer to the long range, the corner performance of the Nikon 30-110mm looks better due to less chromatic aberration:

32) Nikon 1 30-110mm VR @ 110mm vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 100mm Center Frame

At their longest range, again, the lenses seem to show about the same center frame performance, with a slight lead by the 30-110mm:

33) Nikon 1 30-110mm VR @ 110mm vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 100mm Corner Frame

The 30-110mm looks better in the corners because it has less chromatic aberration (and less vignetting):

34) Nikon 1 30-110mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR Conclusion

As you can see from the above image crops, the Nikon 30-110mm VR starts out sharper in the center and weaker in the corners, then catches up in the corners towards its longest focal length. Overall, I would say the differences are rather small when both lenses are stopped down to the same aperture, which is disappointing for the 30-110mm lens. I guess I just expected a little more out of a dedicated telephoto lens. At focal lengths below 60mm the Nikon 1 30-110mm has a 1 stop lead, but it also has a weaker corner performance. In terms of other optical performance differences, the Nikon 1 30-110mm has much less vignetting at f/5.6 throughout its focal range. The 30-110mm has more barrel distortion at 30mm, but less pincushion distortion above 60mm. Both lenses are equally allergic to flare and ghosting, which is why Nikon provided lens hoods. AF speed seems to be about the same on both lenses. As for lens build, the Nikon 1 30-110mm feels a little “plasticy” compared to the all-metal Nikon 1 10-100mm. Each lens has its advantages and disadvantages. The clear advantage of the 30-110mm is its compact size and light weight, while the 10-100mm is a much more versatile lens that almost packs the performance of both the 10-30mm kit and the 30-110mm telephoto lenses into one lens.

35) Summary and Image Samples

The 1 Nikkor VR 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6 is a great compact telephoto zoom lens for the Nikon 1 camera system. With its collapsible barrel design, compact size, low weight and a great optical design with integrated VR, it nicely complements the 1 Nikkor VR 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 kit zoom lens to extend the range of the Nikon 1 cameras at a low cost. Optically, it is a sharp lens with good contrast, colors and bokeh, and its performance is pretty good in the center at all focal lengths, while the corners start out somewhat softer at 30mm and significantly improve towards the long end of the lens. It has very little chromatic aberration issues and while distortion starts out a little strong at 30mm, it pretty much goes away from 40mm onward. While the Nikon 1 10-100mm VR in some regards shows better optical performance, the Nikon 1 30-110mm VR is more compact; plus it weighs and costs 3 times less, having a great price to performance ratio. Overall, the Nikon 30-110mm is a great telephoto zoom lens for the Nikon 1 cameras. I really enjoyed shooting with it while testing the Nikon 1 V1 and J1 cameras.

36) Where to buy and availability

The Nikon 1 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6 VR lens is available from various local and online retailers like B&H in multiple colors either as a secondary lens kit with the Nikon 1 V1 and Nikon 1 J1 cameras, or can be purchased separately for approximately $249 (as of 12/24/2011).

37) More image samples

All Images Copyright © Nasim Mansurov, All Rights Reserved. Copying or reproduction is not permitted without written permission from the author.

1 Nikkor VR 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 PD-ZOOM

The Nikon 1 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 VR is versatile 10x superzoom lens specifically designed for shooting movies on the new Nikon 1 camera system. It is the first Nikkor powered zoom lens with a voice coil AF motor that makes no audible noise when zooming in and out while recording videos. Unlike other Nikon 1 system zoom lenses, the Nikon 1 10-100mm VR lens has no zoom ring; zoom action is controlled by a switch on the side of the lens with three adjustable zoom speeds. This is done to prevent any additional lens shake that is caused by rotating a zoom ring on regular lenses. With the Nikon 1 10-100mm VR lens, you can get closer or further away from your subject very smoothly and naturally – the new AF motor is designed in such a way, that it prevents abrupt stops. Plus, the latest generation of Vibration Reduction technology further helps to keep the camera and lens steady, preventing jittery movements and reducing blurry images. With its focal length of 10-100mm on the Nikon 1 CX sensor (2.7x crop factor), its coverage is equivalent to a 27-270mm lens. The variable aperture of f/4.5-5.6 means that its maximum (largest) aperture changes between f/4.5 to f/5.6, depending on the focal length.

Although I will post a couple of videos demonstrating the nice video capabilities of the lens for shooting videos, I will primarily concentrate on image capturing capabilities of the 1 Nikkor 10-100mm in this review. That’s because I find the Nikon 1 10-100mm VR lens to have superb image capturing capability as well. Therefore, you will see my typical image sharpness and contrast comparisons to other Nikon 1 lenses such as Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8, Nikon 1 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 VR and Nikon 1 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6 VR.

1) Lens Specifications

Main Features:

1. A high-power zoom lens that covers the 10–100mm range of focal lengths (angle of view equivalent to 27–270mm in 35mm format)
2. A 10x power drive zoom lens
3. Retractable lens mechanism
4. Equipped with a vibration reduction (VR) mechanism
5. Zooming speed (3 speeds available) can be adjusted with positioning of the power drive zoom switch
6. Smooth zooming with the built-in power drive zoom mechanism, an unusual feature for interchangeable lenses
7. The perfect lens for those who want to maximize the enjoyment of recording still images, movies, or both
8. Metal mount adopted for increased durability, and a metal exterior for an elegant feel
9. High Refractive Index (HRI) lens element achieves great optical performance in an even more compact body
10. Two aspherical lens elements
11. Three ED (Extra-low Dispersion) glass elements

Technical Specifications:

1. Mount Type: Nikon 1
2. Focal Length Range: 10-100mm
3. Zoom Ratio: 10x
4. Maximum Aperture: f/4.5
5. Minimum Aperature: f/16
6. Format: CX
7. Maximum Angle of View: 77°
8. Minimum Angle of View: 9°10″
9. Lens Elements: 21
10. Lens Groups: 14
11. Optical Conversion Factor: 2.7x
12. Compatible Format(s): CX
13. VR (Vibration Reduction) Image Stabilization: Yes
14. Diaphram Blades: 7 (rounded diaphram opening)
15. High Refractive Index Elements: 1
16. ED Glass Elements: 3
17. Aspherical Elements: 2
18. Autofocus: Yes
19. Internal Focusing: Yes
20. Minimum Focus Distance: 1ft (0.3m) at 10mm focal length, 2.8 ft (0.85m) at 100 mm focal length
21. Filter Size: 72mm
22. Accepts Filter Type: Screw-on
23. Lens Barrel Retraction Function: Yes (performed by DCM motor built into the lens based on power status information received from the camera body)
24. Dimensions: (Approx.) 3.0×3.7 in. (Diameter x Length), 77×95 mm (Diameter x Length)
25. Weight: (Approx.) 18.2 oz. (515g)
26. Supplied Accessories: LC-N72 Snap-on Front Lens Cap, LF-N1000 Rear Lens Cap, HB-N102 Bayonet Lens Hood

2) Lens Handling and Build

If you have used Nikon Nikkor lenses in the past, you will not be disappointed with the new Nikon 1 10-100mm VR, which resembles many Nikkor DSLR lenses in terms of build and quality. It has a tough, all-metal exterior with a single rubber ring for better traction and handling. Similar to other 1 Nikkor lenses, the end of the lens barrel features a gray metal ring for aesthetics. The lens employs an automatic retractable lens mechanism, which greatly reduces the size of the lens when it is not in use. When camera is turned on, the lens automatically extends and unless the switch on the side of the lens is set to “Lock”, it will also automatically collapse when the camera is turned off. Once the lens is fully extended, the length of the lens does not change, whether it is set to 10mm or 100mm. Just like the rest of the Nikon 1 lenses, the Nikon 1 10-100mm has a solid metal mount for better durability.

Nikon put plenty of thought into the new Nikon 1 lens line-up and developed the CX mount from scratch. Compared to the current Nikon DX/FX mounts with 8 contacts, the Nikon 1 lenses and cameras have a total of 12 contacts, which means more communication capabilities between Nikon 1 cameras and lenses. As a result, many of the lens functions such as VR, AF / Manual Focus, are now controlled by the camera. Even the manual focus ring has been removed to simplify lens operation. There are only two switches on the side of the lens: “T / W” (Telephoto / Wide) is used to zoom in and out, while the “Off / Lock” switch controls the automatic lens retraction mechanism. When set to “Off” mode, the camera will automatically extend and collapse when turned on and off, while setting it to “Lock” will keep the lens barrel extended, so that you can start shooting as soon as the camera is turned on. Another positive outcome of the new CX mount with extra contacts is the ability to upgrade lens firmware through the camera, which has never been possible before. Now you see an extra “L” firmware in addition to the traditional “A” and “B” under “Firmware version” in camera setup menu, which shows what firmware the lens is running on. Nikon has already identified and resolved a serious problem with Vibration Reduction on the Nikon 1 10-100mm lens and released a firmware update.

Another similarity between some of the Nikon DSLR lenses and the Nikon 1 10-100mm is, unfortunately, size. The Nikon 1 10-100mm is currently the largest and the bulkiest lens for the Nikon 1 system. In fact, it is larger and heavier than most Nikon DSLR kit lenses and it is almost as heavy as the Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G VR II superzoom. This is a huge disadvantage to this otherwise optically almost perfect lens (more on lens optics below). In fact, as I have already previously stated in my other Nikon 1 lens reviews, this lens defeats the purpose of a compact Nikon 1 camera system. It is so big, bulky and heavy, that it even looks unnatural when mounted on the Nikon 1 V1 and J1 cameras. I had a brief conversation about the Nikon 1 system with Laurie Excell, while shooting alongside her at Bosque del Apache and she also complained about size, bulk and weight of the 10-100mm lens. She said that she immediately returned the lens, because she felt it was “too inconvenient” for a compact camera. While videographers will certainly appreciate the capabilities of this lens, as a photographer, I personally would stay away from this lens for the above reasons. Take a look at how the lens compares to other 1 Nikkor lenses:

3) Lens Features and Optics

The Nikon 1 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 VR features some of the best lens features and optics found in modern Nikon lenses, which is expected, given the size, weight and price of the lens. It sports the latest generation of Vibration Reduction (VR II), Super Integrated Coating (SIC), Internal Focusing (IF) and Voice Coil AF Motor (VCM). Vibration Reduction is Nikon’s term for image stabilization, which is a very useful feature in low light situations, where camera shake and slow shutter speed can cause images to be blurry. Super Integrated Coating helps reduce lens flare and ghosting. Internal focusing means that the lens barrel does not extend or rotate when the lens focuses. And finally, Voice Coil AF Motor is a brand new motor specifically developed for this lens, which allows for super fast and near-silent autofocus + zoom operation.

The Nikon 1 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 VR has a complex optical design consisting of a total of 21 lens elements (in 14 groups), 3 of which are Extra-Dispersion (ED), 2 are Aspherical (AS) and 1 is a High Refractive Index (HRI). Extra-Dispersion lens elements help reduce chromatic aberrations and other optical problems and increase the overall sharpness and contrast of the lens. Aspherical lenses greatly reduce spherical aberration, which also increases lens sharpness and overall performance. High Refractive Index lens
compensates for field curvature and spherical aberrations. With so many correcting and enhancing glass elements, no wonder why the Nikon 1 10-100mm VR is so big and heavy.

The lens is shipped with the HB-N102 Bayonet Lens Hood, which not only helps eliminate ghosting and flares in daylight conditions (blocking sun rays from reaching the front lens element), but also helps protect the same front element. Similar to other Nikkor lens hoods, it can be mounted in reverse position for more compact storage.

As for its video capabilities, here is a video I shot at Bosque del Apache that demonstrates the silent zooming and AF capabilities of the lens:

As you can see, the zoom action is indeed very smooth and you cannot hear the motor at all in the video. VR works great for video recording, but you have to be careful when panning the camera with VR turned on, because it will occasionally bump the camera up or down, as seen in a couple of spots in the video. This is normal VR behavior and the same thing would happen if you were to pan while taking stills. Here is another one shot in slow motion with the Nikon 1 V1 camera:

4) Autofocus Performance and Accuracy

As I have already pointed out in my Nikon 1 V1 Review, the new autofocus system on the Nikon 1 system is phenomenal when compared to other mirrorless competitors. It is very fast and accurate, thanks to the hybrid autofocus system that Nikon specifically developed for the Nikon 1 cameras. Hybrid autofocus is a combination of phase and contrast detect AF that work together to obtain quick and accurate focus. Similar to the “Silent Stepping AF Motor” (STM) on the Nikon 1 10-30mm VR lens, the Voice Coil AF Motor seems to be as fast in acquiring focus in daylight conditions. In low-light conditions, AF speed definitely takes a hit, not because of the lens, but because the camera automatically switches to contrast-detect only mode. The biggest difference between the STM and the VCM motor, is that the latter is silent. Yes, you heard it right – it literally focuses without any noise whatsoever. I even tried putting the lens right next to my ear while half-pressing the shutter and I still could not hear a thing.

Overall, I had a very positive experience with autofocus performance and accuracy of the Nikon 1 10-100mm VR lens. It truly does acquire focus quickly, silently and most importantly, accurately. I shot several hundred images with the 10-100mm lens and I had a hard time finding images that were out of focus. Large depth of field due to the small 2.7x crop factor sensor surely plays a role here, but I have shot with point and shoot cameras with even smaller sensors before and managed to get a lot more out of focus images.

5) Vibration Reduction

The Image Stabilization / Vibration Reduction technology found on the Nikon 1 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 lens is very similar to the VR technology found on modern DSLR lenses – it is very effective when shot at slow shutter speeds. There are, however, some differences in the way VR is deployed on the new mirrorless cameras versus DSLR lenses. First, VR does not engage on DSLR lenses unless the shutter button is half-pressed (or AF-ON pressed). This is not the case with the Nikon mirrorless cameras – when VR is turned on in camera setup, it is constantly on. You do not have to half-press the shutter button – it will always be active. This seems to be a flaw in the Nikon 1 system design, because having VR turned on constantly will have its toll on battery life. Second, VR is no longer controlled through lens switches, but rather from inside the camera menu (as reported earlier). Lastly, for some strange reason, both the Nikon 1 J1 and V1 cameras were shipped with VR turned on in “Active” mode. This is rather strange, because the active mode is supposed to be used when a person stands on a moving platform (inside a car, on a boat, etc). Not sure if this is a firmware issue, but it would be interesting to find out exactly why Nikon decided to do that. Despite these differences and reported issues, Vibration Reduction works great. I would leave it on “Normal” mode within the camera setup and only turn it off when mounting the camera on a tripod.

6) Lens sharpness, contrast and color rendition

As I reveal in my sharpness tests in the subsequent pages of this review, the performance of the Nikon 1 10-100mm f/3.5-5.6 VR is excellent throughout the focal length of the lens and its aperture range. You can see many examples of lens sharpness taken in a controlled environment in the next page, along with comparisons against other lenses.

A quick note on lens sharpness that generally applies to all Nikon 1 Nikkor lenses. Due to the small size of the sensor and the nature of compact optics, an aperture of f/5.6 is rather small and often represents peak lens performance. While diffraction negatively effects images on DX and FX sensors above f/8-f/11, it greatly impacts lens performance at anything smaller than f/5.6 on CX sensors. In the case of the Nikon 1 10-100mm lens, its maximum aperture of f/5.6 on the long end means that you are at its peak performance when it is wide open and stopping down the lens only decreases image quality. This is yet another negative consequence of a small sensor camera design.

7) Bokeh

Isolating subjects from the background with a small-aperture zoom lens is a challenge due to its larger depth of field. This becomes even a more difficult task on Nikon 1 cameras, because of their small 2.7x crop factor sensors. While depth of field and the size of background highlights depend on multiple factors such as focal length, aperture, camera to subject distance and subject to background distance, the quality of Bokeh largely depends on lens optics. If you are able to get close to your subject while keeping the busy background further away from the subject, you can get a decent-looking bokeh, as long as you are shooting at maximum aperture and zoomed in to telephoto range (above 30mm, preferably close to 100mm). The 1 Nikkor VR 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 lens is equipped with a rounded 7-blade diaphragm, which helps in obtaining circular bokeh highlights. Here is an example of bokeh quality shot at approximately 70mm:

Once Nikon releases fast f/1.2-f/1.8 prime lenses, I will look into their bokeh performance in more detail.

8) Vignetting

As for vignetting, the Nikon 1 10-100mm unfortunately shows vignetting at most focal lengths and apertures, with least amount of vignetting at 30mm and most at 10mm. In some cases, even stopping down the lens to f/8 does not get rid of vignetting, as shown below:

RAW shooters will see more vignetting in their images, because vignetting is automatically reduced on JPEG images by camera firmware. If vignetting is an issue for you, it is easy to fix in post-processing, so I would not worry about it. Adobe has not yet added a lens profile for the Nikon 1 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 VR into Lightroom or Camera RAW, but we should be seeing it in upcoming updates pretty soon. Once it is added, you will be able to get rid of vignetting with a single click through the Lens Corrections sub-module in Lightroom / Camera RAW.

9) Ghosting and Flare

Despite advanced lens coatings, the Nikon 1 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 VR lens does not handle flares and ghosting very well, especially when the sun is out of the frame – that’s where you will see a significant drop in contrast. There is a reason why Nikon supplied this lens with a hood. Make sure to keep it on all the time and use your hand to block additional light if it is still reaching the front element of the lens. Here is an extreme example of ghosting and flare when shooting with the sun in the frame:

Ghosting and flares are not always bad though. In some cases, you might want to use them creatively like this:

It goes without saying that the size, color, amount and shape of lens flares depends on a number of factors, including types and number of optical elements, lens aperture, focal length and the location of the light source in the frame.

10) Chromatic Aberration and Distorion

It is hard to keep chromatic aberration under control at all focal lengths on superzoom lenses, despite the fact that the lens sports ED, Aspheric and coated lens elements. There is a modest amount of chromatic aberration at the shortest end (in the corners, high-contrast situations), which is greatly reduced between 30mm and 50mm, then kicks back again at longer focal lengths all the way to 100mm in high-contrast situations. Here is an example of chromatic aberration that is visible at 10mm:

As for distortion, unfortunately, there is quite a bit of barrel distortion on the wide end at 10mm, which gets better by 30mm. From there on, pincushion distortion takes over all the way to the 100mm mark. These optical issues are expected for a superzoom lens like the 10-100mm though; if you look at other superzoom lenses like the Nikon 18-200mm VR, they also exhibit similar chromatic aberration and distortion problems.

Click here to download the full size version of the above image.

Let’s now move on to the good stuff – Sharpness tests. Select the next page below.

11) Sharpness Test

Some technical junk:

1. White Balance: Auto, changed to “Custom”: 4750 Temp, +18 Tint in Lightroom
2. ISO: 100
3. EXIF information is preserved in the images
4. Lens was mounted on Nikon 1 V1 Camera and Gitzo tripod
5. Focusing was performed with manual focus assistance
6. High ISO NR: Off
7. Long Exposure NR: Off
8. Active D-Lighting: Off
9. Image Format: RAW
10. Lightroom settings: Default settings
11. Lightroom export: sRGB JPEG Quality 80
12. Testing was performed at f/4.5, f/5.6, f/8.0. f/11.0 and f/16.0 apertures
13. Nothing was moved during testing

12) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 10mm Center Frame

The wide-open performance of the Nikon 1 10-100mm at 10mm in the center is pretty good – sharpness and contrast do not really improve when stopped down:

Signs of diffraction are visible at f/8 and get worse by f/11:

At f/16, diffraction is so bad that I would not use this aperture on the Nikon 1 sensor at all:

The Nikon 1 lenses should not be used at such small apertures – I would not recommend shooting beyond f/8.

13) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 10mm Corner Frame

Corners are also good wide open with visible signs of vignetting:

Again, diffraction starts affecting resolution at f/8 and worsens by f/11:

I would not shoot at f/16, because diffraction is at its worst here:

Some green fringing is visible in all corner crops – typical zoom lens performance. Because the Nikon 1 lenses show so much diffraction at f/16, I won’t provide any more samples above f/11.

14) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 14mm Center Frame

Zoomed in to 14mm does not change much – the wide open performance is still as good as f/5.6:

And more diffraction starting at f/8:

15) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 14mm Corner Frame

Corners at 14mm look pretty good as well:

16) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 18mm Center Frame

Again, the center performance is excellent:

17) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 18mm Corner Frame

Corner performance remains the same:

18) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 24mm Center Frame

Not much change at 24mm, the image is still very sharp and has great contrast:

Again, diffraction negatively impacts the performance at any aperture smaller than f/5.6:

19) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 24mm Corner Frame

No change in corner performance:

20) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 30mm Center Frame

Not much change in center frame performance at 30mm:

21) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 30mm Corner Frame

Corners are still as good:

23) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 40mm Center Frame

No changes in center performance at 40mm:

24) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 40mm Corner Frame

The same with the corners:

25) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 60mm Center Frame

No changes in center performance at 60mm:

26) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 60mm Corner Frame

At 60mm, we start to see some heavier signs of chromatic aberration in the extreme corners and sharpness is definitely affected:

27) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 80mm Center Frame

Center performance at 80mm is still good, but starting to lose resolution:

28) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 80mm Corner Frame

Even more visible chromatic aberration at 80mm, this time with signs of purple fringing as well. Wide open performance at f/5.6 is rather weak now because of it:

29) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 100mm Center Frame

Again, looks like zoomed in to 100mm we are seeing even more loss of resolution, which is typical for a superzoom lens:

30) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 100mm Corner Frame

At 100mm we see a rather heavy amount of both green and purple fringing in the corners and there is a rather heavy loss of sharpness at all apertures:

The Nikon 1 10-100mm seems to perform well at short focal lengths in the center, with f/5.6 being its sweet spot. Once zoomed in beyond 60mm, there is a slight loss of resolution. As for corners, they start out pretty good at 10mm and get progressively worse, especially beyond 60mm due to chromatic aberration. Peak performance seems to be at around the 30mm mark.

One important fact to note here, is that due to the smaller size of the camera sensor and its pixels, all 1 Nikkor lenses, including the 10-100mm are sharpest at around the f/5.6 mark. Anything smaller than that, especially above f/11 severely impacts image quality due to diffraction. This differs from the typical f/8-f/11 aperture range you might be used to on DSLR lenses. If you shoot in Aperture Priority or Manual modes, try not to go smaller than f/5.6, if you want to get the sharpest image. It is OK to stop down to f/8 to get more depth of field, but definitely not a good idea to go any further. You will just end up degrading image quality too much.

Let’s see how the lens compares to other 1 Nikkor lenses.

Compared to Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8

The Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8 is currently the smallest and the lightest 1 Nikkor lens, known as a “pancake” lens. Its optical characteristics greatly differ from the Nikon 1 10-100mm VR lens – it is a fixed focal length lens, its maximum aperture is much larger at f/2.8 versus f/4.5 (and minimum aperture is limited to f/11) and it has no vibration reduction (VR). Let’s see how the 10mm pancake lens compares to the Nikon 1 10-100mm VR lens at 10mm.

31) Nikon 1 10-100mm VR vs Nikon 1 10mm @ 10mm Center Frame

Wide open at f/2.8, the Nikon 1 10mm performs better than the Nikon 1 10-100mm at f/4.5 (Left: Nikon 1 10-100mm VR, Right: Nikon 1 10mm):

Stopping down the 10mm f/2.8 lens to f/4 or f/4.5 does not make much difference. Even with both lenses stopped down to f/5.6, the Nikon 10mm f/2.8 still seems to be sharper:

Stopping down to f/8 negatively impacts image quality due to diffraction on both lenses:

And even worse at f/11:

Looks like the Nikon 10mm f/2.8 can resolve details a little better in the center at maximum aperture, with its 1+ stop advantage.

32) Nikon 1 10-100mm VR vs Nikon 1 10mm @ 10mm Corner Frame

The corners, on the other hand, tell a different story – the Nikon 10-100mm is clearly sharper wide open than the Nikon 10mm wide open, but shows signs of chromatic aberration:

The corner sharpness of the Nikon 10mm f/2.8 is improved at f/4, so both lenses look about the same now, with the 10-100mm still at f/4.5:

At f/5.6 both lenses perform about the same, with the exception of green fringing visible on the 10-100mm:

No major changes at f/8:

Diffraction reduces resolution at f/11:

33) Nikon 1 10-100mm VR vs Nikon 1 10mm Conclusion

When comparing the Nikon 1 10-100mm VR lens with the Nikon 1 10mm pancake lens, we have to keep in mind that both lenses serve different purposes. The pancake lens is the most compact lens available for the Nikon 1 system today and it offers much faster speed (larger maximum aperture, over 1 stop of difference), which is useful for low-light situations. The Nikon 1 10-100mm lens, on the other hand, is a superzoom lens with image stabilization targeted primarily at videographers. If we are to talk purely about lens sharpness and performance, then the Nikon 10mm f/2.8 seems to have better resolution in the center and about the same corner performance when stopped down to f/4. Vignetting on both lenses is moderate at largest apertures with a bigger spread on the Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8 lens, but once stopped down to just f/4, the Nikon 1 10mm looks much better. Unfortunately, the Nikon 1 10-100mm needs to be stopped down all the way to f/8 to significantly reduce vignetting at almost all focal lengths, except for 30mm, where it seems to have the least amount of problems (the same is true for sharpness, distortion and chromatic aberration). The Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8 also handles distortion, flares and ghosting better than the Nikon 1 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 VR does.

Compared to Nikon 1 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 VR

Let’s see how the Nikon 1 10-100mm VR compares to the Nikon 1 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 VR kit lens that comes with the Nikon 1 V1 / J1 cameras. Comparing these two lenses was rather difficult, because there is no fixed position of focal lengths on the 10-100mm lens and I had to move slightly, then take a picture and check its focal length. As a result, the comparison image crops might not have the same field of view.

34) Nikon 1 10-100mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-30mm VR @ 10mm Center Frame

Let’s see how both lenses compare at 10mm wide open (Left: Nikon 1 10-100mm VR, Right: Nikon 1 10-30mm VR):

Looks like the Nikon 1 10-100mm lens has slightly better contrast at f/4.5 than the Nikon 1 10-30mm lens is at f/3.5. The difference stays about the same when both are stopped down to f/5.6:

Diffraction starts to affect image quality at f/8:

And by f/11 it greatly reduces both sharpness and contrast on both lenses:

35) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 10mm Corner Frame

Let’s see how the corners compare at 10mm:

The wide open performance of the 10-100mm lens is very impressive – it is sharper than the 10-30mm. Stopped down to f/5.6, the 10-100mm still seems to be superior, although it is a close battle.

Not much changes by f/8, besides diffraction:

And f/11 looks rather poor on both:

36) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 14mm Center Frame

Zoomed in to 14mm, the Nikon 10-100mm shows superior performance at the largest aperture:

Although the performance seems to be about the same when stopped down to f/5.6:

Further f/8 and f/11 do not look as good due to diffraction again:

37) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 14mm Corner Frame

At 14mm corners look about the same to me:

38) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 18mm Center Frame

18mm looks about the same as 14mm:

39) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 18mm Corner Frame

Although the 10-100mm appears slightly sharper at f/5.6 in the corners:

40) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 24mm Center Frame

Again, the Nikon 10-100mm appears to be sharper in the center:

41) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 24mm Corner Frame

As well as in the corners:

42) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 30mm Center Frame

Finally, at 30mm the Nikon 10-100mm looks yet again sharper:

43) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 30mm Corner Frame

And much sharper in the corners:

Even stopped down to f/8-f/11 range, the Nikon 10-100mm lens looks much sharper.

44) Nikon 1 10-100mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-30mm VR Conclusion

Without a doubt, the Nikon 10-100mm VR lens seems to outperform the Nikon 10-30mm lens at the center, as well as in the corners at pretty much all focal lengths between 10mm and 30mm and apertures from maximum (f/4.5) to minimum (f/16). I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t, given the price and size of this mega-lens. While the 10-100mm VR lens is designed specifically for videographers, it certainly does have very nice optical features that also make it a great lens for photography (at least at focal lengths below or equal to 30mm). Despite the superiority in sharpness, I still prefer the Nikon 10-30mm kit lens, because it is much more compact and smaller. The sharpness differences above do not make a huge difference in the field anyway…

Compared to Nikon 1 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6 VR

The Nikon 1 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6 VR is a telephoto lens for the Nikon 1 cameras that is equivalent to a 81-297mm lens (think of it as something like the Nikon 70-300mm lens). Below is a comparison between the two starting from 30mm.

45) Nikon 1 10-100mm VR vs Nikon 1 30-110mm VR @ 30mm Center Frame

The Nikon 1 30-110mm seems to perform better at 30mm, even wide open (Left: Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ f/5.3, Right: Nikon 1 30-110mm VR @ f/3.8):

With both stopped down to f/5.6 the sharpness difference is reduced, but the 30-110mm still seems to be a little sharper in comparison:

Again, diffraction kicks in at f/8 and the image quality starts to degrade:

Stopped down to f/11, both lenses perform rather poorly:

Again, I won’t be providing any f/16 crops, since image quality is very poor at the minimum aperture.

46) Nikon 1 10-100mm VR vs Nikon 1 30-110mm VR @ 30mm Corner Frame

Let’s see how the corners compare wide open. Surprisingly, the Nikon 1 30-110mm in the corners does not perform as good in comparison at its maximum aperture of f/3.8:

Stopped down to f/5.6 the Nikon 1 30-110mm gets much sharper, but still looks weaker in comparison:

Stopped down further to f/8, the Nikon 1 30-110mm improves even more, reaching its sweet spot. But it is still worse than the 10-100mm in comparison:

At f/11, diffraction reduces resolution on both lenses and they start to look about the same:

47) Nikon 1 10-100mm VR vs Nikon 1 30-110mm VR @ 40mm Center Frame

Without the doubt, the sweet spot of the Nikon 1 10-100mm lens is at 30mm. Let’s see what happens when the lens is zoomed to 40mm. Again, the wide open performance of the 30-110mm is a little better:

Nothing changes at f/5.6 – the 30-110mm is still sharper:

Stopping down just reduces resolution:

And at f/11 both lenses look about the same:

48) Nikon 1 10-100mm VR vs Nikon 1 30-110mm VR @ 40mm Corner Frame

Let’s take a look at the corners at 40mm. Once again, the Nikon 10-110mm shows better extreme corner performance wide open (1 stop of difference between the two):

Stopping down to f/5.6 does not make much difference:

Although by f/8 both lenses start looking about the same:

And even more so at f/11:

49) Nikon 1 10-100mm VR vs Nikon 1 30-110mm VR @ 60mm Center Frame

At 60mm the center performance of both lenses seems to be about the same:

Nothing changes at f/5.6:

And at f/8.0:

Plenty of diffraction at f/11 on both:

50) Nikon 1 10-100mm VR vs Nikon 1 30-110mm VR @ 60mm Corner Frame

Zoomed in to 60mm, the corner performance of the Nikon 1 10-100mm clearly weakens. Now both lenses are starting to look about the same wide open:

Differences are further reduced at f/5.6, although the Nikon 1 10-100mm has some green fringing visible now:

About the same at f/8:

Again, losing plenty of resolution at f/11:

51) Nikon 1 10-100mm VR vs Nikon 1 30-110mm VR @ 80mm Center Frame

Moving on to 80mm, lenses look about the same:

52) Nikon 1 10-100mm VR vs Nikon 1 30-110mm VR @ 80mm Corner Frame

As we get closer to the long range, the corner performance of the Nikon 30-110mm looks better due to less chromatic aberration:

53) Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 100mm vs Nikon 1 30-110mm VR @ 110mm Center Frame

At their longest range, again, the lenses seem to show about the same center frame performance, with a slight lead by the 30-110mm:

54) Nikon 1 10-100mm VR vs Nikon 1 30-110mm VR @ 100mm Corner Frame

And as expected, the 30-110mm looks better in the corners because it has less chromatic aberration (and less vignetting):

55) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 30-110mm VR Conclusion

As you can see from the above image crops, the Nikon 30-110mm VR starts out sharper in the center and weaker in the corners, then catches up in the corners towards its longest focal length. Overall, I would say the differences are rather small when both lenses are stopped down to the same aperture, which is disappointing for the 30-110mm lens. I guess I just expected a little more out of a dedicated telephoto lens. At focal lengths below 60mm the Nikon 1 30-110mm has a 1 stop lead, but it also has a weaker corner performance. In terms of other optical performance differences, the Nikon 1 30-110mm has much less vignetting at f/5.6 throughout its focal range. The 30-110mm has more barrel distortion at 30mm, but less pincushion distortion above 60mm. Both lenses are equally allergic to flare and ghosting, which is why Nikon provided lens hoods. AF speed seems to be about the same on both lenses. As for lens build, the Nikon 1 30-110mm feels a little “plasticy” compared to the all-metal Nikon 1 10-100mm. Each lens has its advantages and disadvantages. The clear advantage of the 30-110mm is its compact size and light weight, while the 10-100mm is a much more versatile lens that almost packs the performance of both the 10-30mm kit and the 30-110mm telephoto lenses into one lens.

56) Summary and Image Samples

As I have shown in this review, the Nikon 1 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 VR has very impressive performance characteristics when compared to other Nikon 1 lenses. While it is rather slow with a maximum aperture of f/4.5 on the short end and lags behind the Nikon 10mm f/2.8 prime in the center frame, overall it is either on par or better than the Nikon 1 10-30mm VR and the Nikon 1 30-110mm VR lenses. If it was not for the aperture differences, you could say that the Nikon 1 10-100mm VR packs the performance of the 10-30mm and 30-110mm lenses into one lens body. However, this comes at a cost – the Nikon 1 10-100mm VR is more expensive than a Nikon 1 J1 kit with a 10-30mm lens and weighs almost twice more than the Nikon 1 10-30mm and Nikon 1 30-110mm lenses COMBINED. Sure it has very impressive physical and optical characteristics to make videographers and photographers happy, however, the size, the bulk and the weight of the lens offset all of its advantages, in my opinion. As I have already said it before, this lens defeats the purpose of a compact camera system. Even all current Sony NEX lenses are smaller and lighter than this lens and I am not even going to talk about Micro Four Thirds lenses. Unless you are into shooting videos and you really need silent zoom and focus capabilities this lens offers, I would skip it and stay with smaller lenses instead. The Nikon 1 cameras come with the 10-30mm kit lens anyway, so it would be much cheaper to get the 30-110mm zoom lens for your telephoto needs.

57) Where to buy and availability

The Nikon 1 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 VR lens is available in black color only from many local and online retailers including B&H. As of 12/20/2011, it retails for approximately $750 and can be purchased directly from this link.

58) More image samples

All Images Copyright © Nasim Mansurov, All Rights Reserved. Copying or reproduction is not permitted without written permission from the author.

1 Nikkor 10mm f/2.8

The Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8 is a consumer-grade pancake lens designed for the new Nikon 1 camera system. Designed to be an ideal companion for the compact Nikon J1 and V1 camera bodies, it is currently the smallest and the lightest lens from Nikon. With a fixed focal length of 10mm on the Nikon 1 CX sensor (2.7x crop factor), its coverage is equivalent to a 27mm lens in full-frame format.

In this review, I will provide a thorough analysis of the Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8 lens, along with image samples and comparisons against other Nikon 1 lenses.

1) Lens Specifications

Main Features:

1. An elegant and thin wide-angle lens with super portability, perfect for daily casual snapshot and spectacular landscape
2. Superior portability from a stylish, slim wide-angle fixed focal length (prime) lens with a maximum length of just 22 mm
3. Metal mount adopted for increased durability, and a metal exterior for an elegant feel
4. The perfect lens for those who want a lens that can easily be taken anywhere to capture snapshots with superior image quality
5. Two aspherical lens elements

Technical Specifications:

1. Mount Type: Nikon 1
2. Focal Length Range: 10mm
3. Lens construction (groups/elements): 5/6
4. Angle of view: 77°
5. Number of diaphragm: 7 (rounded diaphragm opening)
6. Minimum f-stop: 11
7. Minimum focus distance: 0.2m/0.7ft from focal plane
8. Maximum reproduction ratio: 0.06x
9. 35mm equivalent ratio: 0.16x
10. Weight: Approx. 77g/2.8oz
11. Dia. x length: Approx. 55.5 x 22mm (distance from camera lens mount flange)
12. Filter-attachment size: 40.5mm
13. Lens cap type: Snap-on
14. Lens hood: HN-N101 (optional)
15. Lens case: CL-N101 (optional)
16. Hood cap: HC-N101 (optional)

2) Lens Handling and Build

If you have used Nikon Nikkor lenses in the past, you will not be disappointed with the new Nikon 1 lenses. The Nikon 1 10mm is a very solid lens, despite its compact size. It has a metal barrel with two metal rings – one threaded ring to help mount and dismount the lens and another one for aesthetics. Here is a comparison of the lens with other 1 Nikkor lenses:

As you can see, the Nikon 1 10mm is the smallest in the group, roughly twice smaller than the compact Nikon 1 10-30mm VR lens (when collapsed). Nikon put plenty of thought into the new Nikon 1 lens line-up and developed the CX mount from scratch. Compared to the current Nikon DX/FX mounts with 8 contacts, the Nikon 1 lenses and cameras have a total of 12 contacts, which allows for more communication between Nikon 1 cameras and lenses. As a result, many of the lens functions are now controlled by the camera, so all buttons and switches have been completely eliminated from the lens. Even the manual focus ring has been removed to simplify lens operation. Another positive outcome of the new CX mount with extra contacts is the ability to upgrade lens firmware through the camera, which has never been possible before. Now you see an extra “L” firmware in addition to the traditional “A” and “B” under “Firmware version” in the camera setup menu, which shows what firmware the lens is running on.

Just like the rest of the Nikon 1 lenses, the Nikon 1 10mm has a metal mount for better durability. Unfortunately, the rubber gasket on the lens mount that Nikon has been putting on all new DSLR AF-S lenses is absent, which could make the lens and camera more susceptible to dust. As of now, none of the Nikon 1 system components (including all current lenses) are weather sealed. On a positive note, I have used the Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8 in cold, windy and very dusty environments (Great Sand Dunes and White Sand Dunes in November) and I did not have any issues with dust specks making their way into the camera or the lens.

Despite its ultra compact size, the Nikon 1 10mm sports an impressive optical design with 6 elements (2 of which are aspherical) in 5 groups. Aspherical lenses greatly reduce lens aberrations such as Spherical and Chromatic Aberration and significantly increase lens sharpness. Even the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G does not have a single aspherical element by comparison. In addition, the lens features Super Integrated Coating (helps reduce lens flare and ghosting) and Rear Focusing (only the rear lens group moves for focusing, resulting in faster AF).

Unfortunately, Nikon does not ship the Nikon 1 10mm lens with a lens hood. It can be purchased separately, although I do not see much value in getting one – it would only make the lens larger, plus you can always use your hand to block off the light, if it impacts your images.

3) Autofocus Performance and Accuracy

As I have already pointed out in my Nikon 1 V1 Review, the new autofocus system on the Nikon 1 system is phenomenal when compared to all other mirrorless competitors. It is very fast and accurate, thanks to the hybrid autofocus system that Nikon specifically developed for the Nikon 1 cameras. Hybrid autofocus is a combination of phase and contrast detect AF that work together to obtain quick and accurate focus.

I had a very positive experience with autofocus performance and accuracy of the Nikon 1 10mm lens. It truly does acquire focus very quickly and most importantly, accurately. Wide angle and large depth of field due to the small 2.7x crop factor sensor do contribute to a much larger depth of field, making it easier to get subjects in focus. However, I have used other compact cameras with even smaller sensors in the past and had a lot more focus issues in comparison, so the combination of rear focus and the hybrid AF system surely do their magic. As for AF noise, the Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8 is unfortunately not equipped with the same Silent Stepping AF Motor (STM) that is found on 1 Nikkor zoom lenses like the 1 Nikkor VR 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6, so AF operation is louder in comparison. I would say very comparable to the AF noise we hear on most AF-S lenses.

4) Lens sharpness, contrast and color rendition

As I reveal in my sharpness tests in the subsequent pages of this review, the performance of the Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8 is very good in the center throughout its aperture range, even wide open. The corners suffer from some chromatic aberration and vignetting, especially wide open. You can see many examples of lens sharpness taken in a controlled environment in the next page, along with comparisons against other lenses.

A quick note on lens sharpness that generally applies to all Nikon 1 Nikkor lenses. Due to the small size of the sensor and the nature of compact optics, an aperture of f/5.6 is rather small and often represents peak lens performance. While diffraction negatively effects images on DX and FX sensors above f/8-f/11, it greatly impacts lens performance at anything smaller than f/5.6 on CX sensors. In the case of the Nikon 1 10mm lens, try to shoot at apertures between f/2.8 and f/5.6 for optimal results and do not stop down beyond f/8 or you will see a very heavy loss of resolution and contrast due to heavy diffraction. Unlike some other 1 Nikkor lenses, the lens minimum aperture is limited to f/11. This is yet another negative consequence of a small sensor camera design.

5) Bokeh

Due to the wide-angle nature of the lens and its short focal length, obtaining good bokeh would require you to shoot wide open at f/2.8 and stay very close to your subject. Again, the tiny CX sensor has a negative impact on depth of field, so if you shoot portraits and your goal is to better isolate subjects from the background, you will be better off with a longer focal length lens like the 1 Nikkor VR 30-110mm, or you might want to wait until Nikon releases a fast prime lens. If you are very close to your subject and the background is not too close, you can get a relatively good-looking background when shooting wide open at f/2.8. The lens is equipped with a rounded 7-blade diaphragm, which helps in obtaining circular bokeh highlights.

6) Vignetting

As for vignetting, there is a very noticeable amount of vignetting wide open at f/2.8, which is greatly reduced when the lens is stopped down to f/4. Unfortunately, a slight amount of vignetting stays visible at all apertures:

RAW shooters will see more vignetting in their images, because vignetting is automatically reduced on JPEG images. If vignetting is an issue for you, it is easy to fix in post-processing, so I would not worry about it. Adobe has already added a lens profile for the Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8 into Lightroom 3.6 and their Camera RAW 6.6, so you can easily remove the effect of vignetting with a single click through the Lens Corrections sub-module in Lightroom.

7) Ghosting and Flare

Thanks to clever lens design and Super Integrated Coating, the Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8 lens handles flares and ghosting quite well – one of the reasons why Nikon did not include a lens hood. Here is a sample image with the sun right in the frame:

If you see the effects of flare and ghosting in your images, then simply use your hand to block the incoming light rays. I have done that a few times when shooting on the field and it worked great.

8) Chromatic Aberration and Distorion

As I have already pointed out, the Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8 suffers from some chromatic aberration in the corners. The type of chromatic aberration I saw in my lab tests is green on one side and magenta on another. The good news is that this sort of chromatic aberration is absent in the center and is only pronounced in the extreme corners when shooting at a close distance. I went through many image samples that I shot outdoors and I could not find any images that showed this kind of aberration, which means that it is generally not an issue.

Some visible barrel distortion is present, which is very typical for a wide-angle lens. It is slightly less pronounced compared to the Nikon 1 10-30mm VR at 10mm, plus you can easily get rid of it using the Lens Correction module in Lightroom/Camera RAW. The latest version of Lightroom and Adobe Camera RAW fully support the Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8 lens.

Let’s now move on to the good stuff – Sharpness tests. Select the next page below.

9) Sharpness Test

Some technical junk:

1. White Balance: Auto, changed to “Custom”: 4750 Temp, +18 Tint in Lightroom
2. ISO: 100
3. EXIF information is preserved in the images
4. Lens was mounted on Nikon 1 V1 Camera and Gitzo tripod
5. Focusing was performed with manual focus assistance
6. High ISO NR: Off
7. Long Exposure NR: Off
8. Active D-Lighting: Off
9. Image Format: RAW
10. Lightroom settings: Default settings
11. Lightroom export: sRGB JPEG Quality 80
12. Testing was performed at f/2.8, f/4.0, f/5.6, f/8.0 and f/11.0
13. Nothing was moved during testing

10) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10mm Center Frame

The wide-open performance of the Nikon 1 10mm in the center is superb and stopping down the lens does not seem to noticeably improve sharpness or contrast:

Lens sharpness drops a tad at f/5.6 and gets worse by f/8, due to diffraction:

Diffraction is pretty bad at f/11 as can be seen below:

The Nikon 1 lenses should never be used at such small apertures – I would not recommend shooting beyond f/8. The sweet spot for this lens seems to be at around the f/4 mark.

11) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10mm Corner Frame

Let’s see how the lens performs in the corners. The lens would have looked much sharper, if it wasn’t for some chromatic aberration that is visible in the extreme corners. Heavy vignetting is also quite noticeable at maximum aperture, but gets much better when stopped down to f/4:

The sweet spot in the corners seems to be at f/5.6, although stopping down to f/8 does not seem to hurt the image as much either:

Again, stopping down further to f/11 significantly impacts image sharpness due to diffraction:

The Nikon 1 10mm seems to perform best at f/4 in the center and at f/5.6 in the corners. The wide open performance is superb and I would not recommend shooting at f/11 due to heavy diffraction. Let’s see how the lens compares to other 1 Nikkor lenses.

Compared to Nikon 1 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 VR

The Nikon 1 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 VR is currently the standard kit lens that comes with the Nikon 1 V1 and J1 cameras. Let’s see how the 10mm pancake lens compares to the Nikon 1 10-30mm VR lens at 10mm.

12) Nikon 1 10mm vs Nikon 1 10-30mm VR @ 10mm Center Frame

Wide open at f/2.8, the Nikon 1 10mm performs better than the Nikon 1 10-30mm at f/3.5 (Left: Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8, Right: Nikon 1 10-30mm VR):

The performance difference shrinks greatly with both lenses stopped down to f/4:

At f/5.6, I cannot see any difference between the two:

Stopping down to f/8 negatively impacts image quality due to diffraction on both lenses:

And even worse at f/11:

13) Nikon 1 10mm vs Nikon 1 10-30mm VR @ 10mm Corner Frame

Let’s see how the corners compare between the two. Looks like the wide open performance of both lenses is about the same:

Stopped down to f/4 the Nikon 1 10mm seems sharper, but has some visible green and purple fringing:

Again, some heavy CA at f/5.6:

Both lenses look more or less the same at f/8:

And diffraction just ruins the f/11 performance on both lenses:

14) Nikon 1 10mm vs Nikon 1 10-30mm VR Conclusion

When comparing the Nikon 1 10mm pancake lens with the Nikon 1 10-30mm VR, we have to keep in mind that both lenses serve different purposes. The pancake lens is the most compact lens available for the Nikon 1 system today and it offers faster speed (larger maximum aperture), which is useful for low-light situations. The Nikon 1 10-30mm lens, on the other hand, is a general-purpose lens that offers the versatility of a zoom lens. If we are to talk purely about lens sharpness and performance, then both have their advantages and disadvantages. The Nikon 1 10mm offers superb wide open performance in the center, but suffers from lateral chromatic aberration in the extreme corners. The 10mm pancake also has a heavier amount of vignetting at its maximum aperture, although it seems to handle ghosting and flares a little better. AF performance seems to be about the same on both lenses, although the 10mm pancake is noisier.

Overall, the Nikon 1 10mm seems to offer only two advantages over the Nikon 1 10-30mm – compact size and larger maximum aperture. Performance-wise it is not really better than the 10-30mm zoom (due to its rather high level of CA) and has one disadvantage – it lacks image stabilization.

Compared to Nikon 1 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 VR PD-ZOOM

One interesting lens that Nikon introduced for the Nikon 1 mount is the Nikon 1 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 VR PD-ZOOM, also known as “1 NIKKOR VR 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 PD-ZOOM”. This superzoom is the most expensive Nikon CX lens and it is also the biggest/bulkiest of the four. The Nikon 1 10-100mm is equipped with a new “Voice Coil AF Motor” (VCM), which allows zooming in and out by using the power zoom switch on the lens. Its focal length is equivalent to a 27–270mm lens in 35mm format and it is also equipped with VR (plus a bunch of nice optical features from DSLR lenses).

15) Nikon 1 10mm vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 10mm Center Frame

Let’s see how both lenses compare at 10mm wide open. With a more than 1 stop of difference, the Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8 seems to have slightly better sharpness and contrast than the 10-100mm superzoom:

Both lenses perform about the same when stopped down to f/5.6:

Then diffraction starts kicking in at f/8:

And finally, diffraction is at its worst at f/11, although the Nikon 1 10mm seems to suffer a little more from it.

16) Nikon 1 10mm vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 10mm Corner Frame

The corners, on the other hand, seem to be better on the Nikon 1 10-100mm, largely due to less pronounced chromatic aberration (although the Nikon 1 10-100mm is also showing very noticeable green aberrations:

The corner performance starts to look similar when the Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8 is stopped down to f/4:

At f/5.6, the corner performance on both lenses looks about the same:

Not much changes at f/8:

And diffraction impacts both lenses at f/11:

17) Nikon 1 10mm vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR Conclusion

Once again, both the Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8 and the Nikon 1 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 VR serve different purposes and have completely different optical and physical characteristics. The Nikon 1 10mm is a very compact prime lens for still photography, while the Nikon 10-100mm is a big and heavy superzoom for both stills and videos. Weighing a whopping 530 grams, it is about 7 times heavier than the 10mm pancake! When it comes to pure optical performance at 10mm, the Nikon 1 10mm shows superb center performance, beating the 10-100mm superzoom in sharpness and contrast. However, its corner performance is not as good wide open due to noticeable green and purple chromatic aberration and only gets comparable between f/4 and f/5.6 apertures.

While the 10-100mm VR lens is designed specifically for videographers, it certainly does have very nice optical features that also make it a great lens for photography. However, the lens is too darn big! It is bigger and heavier than most Nikon DSLR kit lenses, which is ridiculous, in my opinion. It defeats the purpose of having a compact camera system like the Nikon 1. Walking around with the lens is not only inconvenient, but also painful, because it balances terribly with the V1/J1 cameras. The thin camera strap of the V1/J1 cameras quickly transferred the weight of the lens to my neck and it was a painful experience. While it may have some of the best optical designs out there with Vibration Reduction, High Refractive Index, Internal Focus, Super Integrated Coating, 2 Aspherical and 3 ED elements, it is very heavy and bulky for the Nikon 1 system. I definitely prefer the 10mm pancake or the 10-30mm over the 10-100mm because of this.

18) Summary and Image Samples

Despite some optical weaknesses and fixed focal length, the Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8 pancake lens is a perfect companion for the Nikon 1 cameras. While Nikon did produce some pancake lenses in the past, they were not as relevant and popular on SLRs. With the introduction of the Nikon 1 compact camera system, pancake lenses are now going to regain their popularity, largely due to their fast speed, low weight and very compact size – the three main reasons why people buy such lenses in the first place. When mounted on the Nikon 1 V1 or J1 cameras, the Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8 is a very natural fit; it easily fit my winter jacket pockets when I was travelling in New Mexico, something I could not do with the gigantic 10-100mm superzoom.
As for the optical performance of the Nikon 1 10mm, it has a very impressive center frame sharpness and contrast across the aperture range, especially between f/2.8 and f/4, progressively getting worse from f/5.6 and onward due to diffraction. Its corner sharpness and contrast are also good, peaking at around f/5.6, but generally weaker than other current 1 Nikkor lenses due to green / magenta chromatic aberration. Distortion and vignetting are tolerable, while lens flare and ghosting are controlled well. The two biggest weaknesses of the Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8 lens are rather noisy AF (when compared to the near-silent AF of the Nikon 1 10-30mm VR) and lack of image stabilization / vibration reduction. But it is understandable why Nikon designed the lens this way – those features most likely would have significantly increased the size of the lens. Overall, given its small size and low price, it is a great little lens that I would not hesitate to buy for the Nikon 1 cameras. I very much hope that we will be seeing more and better pancake lenses from Nikon in the future.

19) Where to buy and availability

B&H is currently selling the Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8 for $249.99 and has it in stock (as of 12/16/2011), but you can also purchase it from other online and local resellers.

20) More image samples

All Images Copyright © Nasim Mansurov, All Rights Reserved. Copying or reproduction is not permitted without written permission from the author.

1 Nikkor VR 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6

The Nikon 1 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 VR is a general-purpose consumer-grade lens designed for the new Nikon 1 camera system. It is bundled with the Nikon 1 V1 and Nikon 1 J1 cameras as a standard kit lens and cannot be purchased separately. With its focal length of 10-30mm on the Nikon 1 CX sensor (2.7x crop factor), its coverage is equivalent to a 27-81mm lens. The variable aperture of f/3.5-5.6 means that its maximum (largest) aperture changes between f/3.5 to f/5.6, depending on the focal length. It is a very lightweight lens, and similar to interchangeable lenses from other compact mirrorless camera manufacturers such as Olympus, the lens is collapsible, which also makes it quite compact for travel and transportation.

In this review, I will provide a thorough analysis of the Nikon 1 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 VR lens, along with image samples and comparisons against other Nikon 1 lenses.

1) Lens Specifications

Main Features:

1. Compact and lightweight with 3x standard zoom lens to cover practical focal length
2. Retractable Lens Mechanism increases portability
3. Design elements, colors, and materials are carefully chosen for the camera body design
4. Vibration Reduction (VR) enables sharper pictures when shooting telephoto subjects, dimly lit scenes and other handheld situations
5. Minimum focus distance of 20cm from focal plane at all zoom positions
6. Three aspherical lens elements

Technical Specifications:

1. Mount Type: Nikon 1
2. Focal Length Range: 10-30mm
3. Zoom Ratio: 3x
4. Maximum Aperture: f/3.5
5. Minimum Aperature: f/16
6. Format: CX
7. Maximum Angle of View: 77°
8. Minimum Angle of View: 29°40″
9. Lens Elements: 12
10. Lens Groups: 9
11. Optical Conversion Factor: 2.7x
12. Compatible Format(s): CX
13. VR (Vibration Reduction) Image Stabilization: Yes
14. Diaphram Blades: 7 (rounded diaphram opening)
15. Aspherical Elements: 3
16. Autofocus: Yes
17. Internal Focusing: Yes
18. Minimum Focus Distance: 0.66ft (0.2m)
19. Filter Size: 40.5mm
20. Accepts Filter Type: Screw-on
21. Lens Barrel Retraction Function: Rotation of zoom ring
22. Dimensions: (Approx.) 2.3×1.7in. (Diameter x Length), 57.5x42mm (Diameter x Length)
23. Weight: (Approx.) 4.1 oz. (115g)
24. Supplied Accessories: LC-N40.5 Snap-on Front Lens Cap, LF-N1000 Rear Lens Cap

2) Lens Handling and Build

If you have used Nikon Nikkor lenses in the past, you will not be disappointed with the new Nikon 1 lenses. The Nikon 1 10-30mm VR is built very well, despite its compact size. The base of the lens barrel seems to be made with the same tough plastic Nikon uses in its DSLR lenses. The thick rubber zoom ring with a plastic base has pretty good traction to easily zoom in and out with fingers and sits in between two thin metal rings. The top of the lens has another thicker metal ring, which is there for additional protection and aesthetics. The lens employs a retractable lens mechanism, similar to the Olympus Zuiko 14-42mm, which reduces the size of the lens to approximately 42mm and locks it in place when fully retracted. Here is a comparison of the lens with the Olympus Zuiko 14-42mm and Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lenses:

As you can see, the Nikon 1 10-30mm VR is the smallest in the group, although considering CX and Micro 4/3 sensor differences, the Nikon 1 10-30mm should have been even smaller.

The barrel is fully extended at 10 and 30mm focal lengths, which almost doubles the length of the lens, so it is definitely nice to be able to collapse it when not using it. Nikon put plenty of thought into the new Nikon 1 lens line-up and developed the CX mount from scratch. Compared to the current Nikon DX/FX mounts with 8 contacts, the Nikon 1 lenses and cameras have a total of 12 contacts, which allows for more communication between Nikon 1 cameras and lenses. As a result, many of the lens functions are now controlled by the camera, so all the extra buttons and switches have been eliminated. Even the manual focus ring has been removed to simplify lens operation. There is only one button on the lens located on the zoom ring and it serves a dual purpose – it is used to collapse or extend the lens and to turn the camera on. I really like that the camera turns on when the lens is extended – one less thing to do when taking pictures. Sadly, collapsing the lens does not turn the camera off, which would be great if it did. Obviously, this behavior can be easily overridden by the camera on/off button. Another positive outcome of the new CX mount with extra contacts is the ability to upgrade lens firmware through the camera, which has never been possible before. Now you see an extra “L” firmware in addition to the traditional “A” and “B” under “Firmware version” in camera setup menu, which shows what firmware the lens is running on. Nikon has already identified and resolved a serious problem with Vibration Reduction (read on this below) on the Nikon 1 10-30mm lens and released a firmware update.

Just like the rest of the Nikon 1 lenses, the Nikon 1 10-30mm has a metal mount. This is surprising, because kit lenses of this caliber from Nikon like the Nikon 18-55mm typically have plastic mounts. Even the Olympus Zuiko 14-42mm has a plastic mount. This is great news for the Nikon 1 system owners, because it means that all future CX lenses will most likely have metal mounts as well, even on cheap zoom lenses. On the other hand, the rubber gasket on the lens mount that Nikon has been putting on all new AF-S lenses is absent, which could make the lens and camera more susceptible to dust. As of now, none of the Nikon 1 system components (including all current lenses) are weather sealed. On a positive note, I have used the Nikon 1 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 VR in cold, windy and very dusty environments (Great Sand Dunes and White Sand Dunes in November) and I did not have any issues with dust specks making their way into the camera or the lens.

Despite its compact size, the Nikon 1 10-30mm sports impressive optical features such as Vibration Reduction (VR), Super Integrated Coating (SIC), Internal Focusing (IF) and Silent Stepping AF Motor (STM). Vibration Reduction is Nikon’s term for image stabilization, which is a very useful feature in low light situations, where camera shake and slow shutter speed can cause images to be blurry. Super Integrated Coating helps reduce lens flare and ghosting. Internal focusing means that the lens barrel does not change when the lens focuses. And finally, Silent Stepping AF Motor is a brand new motor specifically developed for the CX lenses, which allows for super fast and near-silent autofocus operation.

The Nikon 1 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 VR has a complex optical design consisting of a total of 12 lens elements (in 9 groups), 3 of which are aspherical elements. Aspherical lenses greatly reduce lens aberrations such as Spherical and Chromatic Aberration and significantly increase lens sharpness. Even the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G does not have a single aspherical element by comparison.

Unfortunately, Nikon does not ship the Nikon 1 10-30mm kit lens with a lens hood. It can be purchased separately, although I do not see much value in getting one – you can always use your hand to block off the light, if it impacts your images.

3) Autofocus Performance and Accuracy

As I have already pointed out in my Nikon 1 V1 Review, the new autofocus system on the Nikon 1 system is phenomenal when compared to other mirrorless competitors. It is very fast and accurate, thanks to the hybrid autofocus system that Nikon specifically developed for the Nikon 1 cameras. Hybrid autofocus is a combination of phase and contrast detect AF that work together to obtain quick and accurate focus. For the much faster hybrid autofocus operation, Nikon had to develop a brand new AF lens motor called “Silent Stepping AF Motor” (STM). Compared to the “Silent Wave Motor” (SWM) that Nikon uses on its latest AF-S lenses, STM is much quieter and quicker.

I had a very positive experience with autofocus performance and accuracy of the Nikon 1 10-30mm lens. It truly does acquire focus quickly, silently and most importantly, accurately. I shot several hundred images with the 10-30mm lens and I had a hard time finding images that were out of focus. Large depth of field due to the small 2.7x crop factor sensor surely plays a role here, but I have shot with point and shoot cameras with even smaller sensors before and managed to get a lot more out of focus images.

4) Vibration Reduction

The Image Stabilization / Vibration Reduction technology found on the Nikon 1 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 lens is very similar to the VR technology found on modern DSLR lenses – it is very effective when shot at slow shutter speeds. There are, however, some differences in the way VR is deployed on the new mirrorless cameras versus DSLR lenses. First, VR does not engage on DSLR lenses unless the shutter button is half-pressed (or AF-ON pressed). This is not the case with the Nikon mirrorless cameras – when VR is turned on in camera setup, it is constantly on. You do not have to half-press the shutter button – it will always be active. This seems to be a flaw in the Nikon 1 system design, because having VR turned on constantly will have its toll on battery life. Second, VR is no longer controlled through lens switches, but rather from inside the camera menu (as reported earlier). Lastly, for some strange reason, both the Nikon 1 J1 and V1 cameras were shipped with VR turned on in “Active” mode. This is rather strange, because the active mode is supposed to be used when a person stands on a moving platform (inside a car, on a boat, etc). Not sure if this is a firmware issue, but it would be interesting to find out exactly why Nikon decided to do that. Despite these differences and reported issues, Vibration Reduction works great. I would leave it on “Normal” mode within the camera setup and only turn it off when mounting the camera on a tripod.

5) Lens sharpness, contrast and color rendition

As I reveal in my sharpness tests in the subsequent pages of this review, the performance of the Nikon 1 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 VR is very good throughout the focal length of the lens and its aperture range. You can see many examples of lens sharpness taken in a controlled environment in the next page, along with comparisons against other lenses.

A quick note on lens sharpness that generally applies to all Nikon 1 Nikkor lenses. Due to the small size of the sensor and the nature of compact optics, an aperture of f/5.6 is rather small and often represents peak lens performance. While diffraction negatively effects images on DX and FX sensors above f/8-f/11, it greatly impacts lens performance at anything smaller than f/5.6 on CX sensors. In the case of the Nikon 1 10-30mm lens, its maximum aperture of f/5.6 on the long end means that you are at its peak performance when it is wide open and stopping down the lens only decreases image quality. This is yet another negative consequence of a small sensor camera design.

6) Bokeh

As variable aperture zoom kit lens, I would not expect the Nikon 1 10-30mm VR to have great-looking bokeh. Subject isolation with a small sensor and such slow aperture values is a challenge in itself. However, if you are very close to your subject and the background is not too close, you can get a relatively good-looking background. The lens is equipped with a rounded 7-blade diaphragm, which helps in obtaining circular bokeh highlights, especially when shot wide open. Once Nikon releases fast f/1.2-f/1.8 prime lenses, I will look into their bokeh performance in more detail. Here are a couple of image samples that show the bokeh performance of this lens:

7) Vignetting

As for vignetting, the Nikon 1 10-30mm has some vignetting wide open at 10mm, which is greatly reduced by f/4 and completely gone by f/5.6. At 14mm there is still a very slight amount of vignetting present at maximum aperture of f/4 and anything beyond that in focal length shows practically no visible vignetting:

RAW shooters will see more vignetting in their images, because vignetting is automatically reduced on JPEG images. If vignetting is an issue for you, it is easy to fix in post-processing, so I would not worry about it. Adobe has already added a lens profile for the Nikon 1 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 VR into Lightroom 3.6 and their Camera RAW 6.6, so you can easily remove the effect of vignetting with a single click through the Lens Corrections sub-module in Lightroom.

8) Ghosting and Flare

Thanks to clever lens design and Super Integrated Coating, the Nikon 1 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 VR lens handles flares and ghosting quite well – one of the reasons why Nikon did not include a lens hood. Here are some image samples with the sun in the frame:

If you find yourself shooting at angles where the sun hits the front element of the lens and produces flare/ghosting effects, then simply use your hand to block the incoming light rays. I have done that a few times when shooting on the field and it worked great.

9) Chromatic Aberration and Distorion

As expected for a kit lens, there is a modest amount of barrel distortion on the widest end between 10mm and 14mm. Anything above 14mm is controlled very well and is practically distortion-free, which is great news. I could not see any pincushion distortion at short distances either. Chromatic aberration is also handled quite well, thanks to the three aspherical elements.

Let’s now move on to the good stuff – Sharpness tests. Select the next page below.

10) Sharpness Test

Some technical junk:

1. White Balance: Auto, changed to “Custom”: 4750 Temp, +18 Tint in Lightroom
2. ISO: 100
3. EXIF information is preserved in the images
4. Lens was mounted on Nikon 1 V1 Camera and Gitzo tripod
5. Focusing was performed with manual focus assistance
6. High ISO NR: Off
7. Long Exposure NR: Off
8. Active D-Lighting: Off
9. Image Format: RAW
10. Lightroom settings: Default settings
11. Lightroom export: sRGB JPEG Quality 80
12. Testing was performed at f/3.5, f/4.0, f/5.6, f/8.0. f/11.0 and f/16.0 apertures
13. Nothing was moved during testing

11) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-30mm VR @ 10mm Center Frame

The wide-open performance of the Nikon 1 10-30mm at 10mm in the center is pretty good – sharpness and contrast only slightly improve when stopped down:

At f/5.6 the lens reaches its peak performance and stopping down further to f/8 decreases image quality and sharpness due to diffraction:

Diffraction is pretty bad at f/11 and even worse at f/16:

The Nikon 1 lenses should never be used at such small apertures – I would not recommend shooting beyond f/8.

12) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-30mm VR @ 10mm Corner Frame

Let’s see how the lens performs in the corners:

The corner performance at large apertures is very good, slightly worse than what we see in the center. The lens peak corner performance is again at around f/5.6 and it starts to worsen when stopped down to f/8.0:

Again, stopping down further to f/11 and f/16 significantly impacts image sharpness.

A small amount of chromatic aberration is visible in all corner crops – typical zoom lens performance.

13) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-30mm VR @ 14mm Center Frame

Zoomed in to 14mm does not change much – the wide open performance is still only a little worse than stopped down performance:

Again, peak performance is reached at around f/5.6. Stopping the lens down further to f/8 and f/11 degrades image quality due to diffraction:

I won’t post any f/16 crops, because they look terrible, as in the case with 10mm.

14) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-30mm VR @ 14mm Corner Frame

Corners at 14mm look very similar to those at 10mm, with peak performance right around f/5.6:

15) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-30mm VR @ 18mm Center Frame

Looks like lens performance improves at around the 18mm mark and the wide open performance looks as good as f/5.6:

Again, don’t stop the lens down beyond f/5.6:

16) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-30mm VR @ 18mm Corner Frame

There is a slight amount of vignetting wide open, which is why the image appears darker. Otherwise, the corner performance is almost as good as in the center:

17) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-30mm VR @ 24mm Center Frame

Not much change at 24mm, the image is still very sharp and has great contrast:

Again, diffraction negatively impacts the performance at any aperture smaller than f/5.6:

18) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-30mm VR @ 24mm Corner Frame

No change in corner performance:

19) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-30mm VR @ 30mm Center Frame

At its longest end of 30mm, the lens’ maximum aperture is f/5.6, which also seems to be its sweet spot:

20) Sharpness Test – Nikon 1 10-30mm VR @ 30mm Corner Frame

The same can be seen in the corners:

The Nikon 1 10-30mm seems to perform well at all focal lengths, with f/5.6 being its sweet spot. The wide open performance is very good, but I would not recommend shooting at apertures smaller than f/8.0 – diffraction severely impacts sharpness and contrast at f/11 and f/16. Let’s see how the lens compares to other 1 Nikkor lenses.

Compared to Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8

The Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8 is currently the smallest and the lightest 1 Nikkor lens, known as a “pancake” lens. Its optical characteristics greatly differ from the Nikon 1 10-30mm VR lens – it is a fixed focal length lens, its maximum aperture is much larger at f/2.8 versus f/3.5 (and minimum aperture is limited to f/11) and it has no vibration reduction (VR). Let’s see how the 10mm pancake lens compares to the Nikon 1 10-30mm VR lens at 10mm.

21) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 10mm @ 10mm Center Frame

Wide open at f/2.8, the Nikon 1 10mm performs better than the Nikon 1 10-30mm at f/3.5:

The performance difference shrinks greatly with both lenses stopped down to f/4:

At f/5.6, I cannot see any difference between the two:

Stopping down to f/8 negatively impacts image quality due to diffraction on both lenses:

And even worse at f/11:

22) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 10mm @ 10mm Corner Frame

Let’s see how the corners compare between the two. Looks like the wide open performance of both lenses is about the same:

Stopped down to f/4 the Nikon 1 10mm seems sharper, but then it has severe chromatic aberration issues, with both green and purple fringing clearly visible and pronounced:

Again, some heavy CA at f/5.6:

Both lenses look more or less the same at f/8, but the Nikon 1 10mm still has more visible chromatic aberration:

The same with f/11:

23) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 10mm Conclusion

When comparing the Nikon 1 10-30mm VR lens with the Nikon 1 10mm pancake lens, we have to keep in mind that both lenses serve different purposes. The pancake lens is the most compact lens available for the Nikon 1 system today and it offers faster speed (larger maximum aperture), which is useful for low-light situations. The Nikon 1 10-30mm lens, on the other hand, is a general-purpose lens that offers the versatility of a zoom lens. If we are to talk purely about lens sharpness and performance, then both have their advantages and disadvantages. The Nikon 1 10mm offers superb wide open performance in the center, but suffers from rather heavy lateral chromatic aberration in the corners. The 10mm pancake also has a heavier amount of vignetting at its maximum aperture, although it seems to handle ghosting and flares a little better. AF performance seems to be about the same on both lenses.

Overall, the Nikon 1 10mm seems to offer only two advantages over the Nikon 1 10-30mm – compact size and larger maximum aperture. Performance-wise it is not better than the 10-30mm zoom (due to its rather high level of CA) and has one disadvantage – it lacks image stabilization.

Compared to Nikon 1 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6 VR

The Nikon 1 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6 VR is a telephoto lens for the Nikon 1 cameras that is equivalent to a 81-297mm lens (think of it as something like the Nikon 70-300mm lens). Due to its much longer range, the only focal length I could compare was 30mm.

24) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 30-110mm VR @ 30mm Center Frame

As expected, the Nikon 1 30-110mm performs much better at 30mm, even wide open:

Sharpness difference is very apparent, especially when both lenses are stopped down to f/5.6:

Again, diffraction kicks in at f/8 and the image quality starts to degrade on both, although the 30-110mm still looks a world better:

Stopped down to f/11, both lenses perform rather poorly, but the 10-30mm looks much worse in comparison:

Again, I won’t be providing any f/16 crops, since image quality is very poor at the minimum aperture.

25) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 30-110mm VR @ 30mm Corner Frame

Let’s see how the corners compare wide open. Surprisingly, the Nikon 1 30-110mm in the corners does not perform as good in comparison, so the differences are pretty small:

At f/5.6 the Nikon 1 30-110mm looks better and sharper:

Stopped down further to f/8, the Nikon 1 30-110mm improves even more, reaching its sweet spot. Again, it looks better than the 10-30mm lens:

And the same is true for f/11, although diffraction definitely takes its toll:

26) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 30-110mm VR Conclusion

Both the Nikon 1 10-30mm VR and the Nikon 1 30-110mm VR lenses are for two different needs and they are meant to compliment each other – the 10-30mm lens covers wider angles and mid-range, while the 30-110mm lens covers telephoto. As you can see from the above image crops, the Nikon 30-110mm VR is much sharper than the 10-30mm lens at 30mm in comparison. This is expected, because it is a specialized lens for telephoto needs and it should perform well at longer focal lengths. As for vignetting, the Nikon 10-30mm vignettes less at 30mm in comparison, especially in the extreme corners, but don’t forget that it is also at f/5.6 vs f/3.8. Ghosting and flares are not handled well by the 30-110mm VR due to the nature of telephoto lens optics. AF speed seems to be about the same on both lenses. As for physical differences, the Nikon 1 30-110mm is a much longer lens compared to the 10-30mm, especially when fully extended.

Compared to Nikon 1 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 VR PD-ZOOM

One interesting lens that Nikon introduced for the Nikon 1 mount is the Nikon 1 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 VR PD-ZOOM, also known as “1 NIKKOR VR 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 PD-ZOOM”. This superzoom is the most expensive Nikon CX lens and it is also the biggest/bulkiest of the four. Compared to the 10-30mm lens, the Nikon 1 10-100mm is equipped with a new “Voice Coil AF Motor” (VCM), which allows zooming in and out by using the power zoom switch on the lens. Its focal length is equivalent to a 27–270mm lens in 35mm format and it is also equipped with VR (plus a bunch of nice optical features from DSLR lenses). Comparing these two lenses was rather difficult, because there is no fixed position of focal lengths on the 10-100mm lens and I had to move slightly, then take a picture and check its focal length. As a result, the comparison image crops might not have the same field of view.

27) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 10mm Center Frame

Let’s see how both lenses compare at 10mm wide open:

Looks like the Nikon 1 10-100mm lens has slightly better contrast at f/4.5 than the Nikon 1 10-30mm lens is at f/3.5. The difference stays about the same when both are stopped down to f/5.6:

Diffraction starts to affect image quality at f/8:

And by f/11 it greatly reduces both sharpness and contrast on both lenses:

28) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 10mm Corner Frame

Let’s see how the corners compare at 10mm:

The wide open performance of the 10-100mm lens is very impressive – it is sharper than the 10-30mm. Stopped down to f/5.6, the 10-100mm still seems to be superior, although it is a close battle.

Not much changes by f/8, besides diffraction:

And f/11 looks rather poor on both:

29) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 14mm Center Frame

Zoomed in to 14mm, the Nikon 10-100mm shows superior performance at the largest aperture:

Although the performance seems to be about the same when stopped down to f/5.6:

Further f/8 and f/11 do not look as good due to diffraction again:

29) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 14mm Corner Frame

At 14mm corners look about the same to me:

30) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 18mm Center Frame

18mm looks about the same as 14mm:

31) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 18mm Corner Frame

Although the 10-100mm appears slightly sharper at f/5.6 in the corners:

32) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 24mm Center Frame

Again, the Nikon 10-100mm appears to be sharper in the center:

33) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 24mm Corner Frame

As well as in the corners:

34) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 30mm Center Frame

Finally, at 30mm the Nikon 10-100mm looks yet again sharper:

35) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR @ 30mm Corner Frame

And much sharper in the corners:

Even stopped down to f/8-f/11 range, the Nikon 10-100mm lens looks much sharper.

36) Nikon 1 10-30mm VR vs Nikon 1 10-100mm VR Conclusion

Without a doubt, the Nikon 1 10-100mm VR lens seems to outperform the Nikon 10-30mm lens at the center, as well as in the corners at pretty much all focal lengths between 10mm and 30mm and apertures from maximum (f/4.5) to minimum (f/16). I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t, given the price and size of this mega-lens. While the 10-100mm VR lens is designed specifically for videographers, it certainly does have very nice optical features that also make it a great lens for photography. However, the lens is too darn big! It is bigger and heavier than most Nikon DSLR kit lenses, which is ridiculous, in my opinion. It defeats the purpose of having a compact camera system like the Nikon 1. Walking around with the lens is not only inconvenient, but also painful, because it balances terribly with the V1/J1 cameras. The thin camera strap of the V1/J1 cameras quickly transferred the weight of the lens to my neck and it was a painful experience. While it may have some of the best optical designs out there with Vibration Reduction, High Refractive Index, Internal Focus, Super Integrated Coating, 2 Aspherical and 3 ED elements, it is very heavy and bulky for the Nikon 1 system. I definitely prefer the 10-30mm over the 10-100mm because of this.

37) Summary and Image Samples

As I have shown in this review, the Nikon 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 VR is a great kit lens for the Nikon 1 mirrorless camera system. It has a very useful zoom range of 27-81mm (equivalent to 35mm), collapsible barrel design, vibration reduction, compact size, low weight and a great optical design, making it a lens of choice for everyday photography on Nikon 1 cameras. It is a sharp lens with good contrast and colors, and its performance is pretty good both in the center and in the corners. One important fact to note here, is that due to the smaller size of the camera sensor and its pixels, all 1 Nikkor lenses, including the 10-30mm are sharpest at around the f/5.6 mark. Anything smaller than that, especially above f/11 severely impacts image quality due to diffraction. This differs from the typical f/8-f/11 aperture range you might be used to on DSLR lenses. If you shoot in Aperture Priority or Manual modes, try not to go smaller than f/5.6, if you want to get the sharpest image. It is OK to stop down to f/8 to get more depth of field, but definitely not a good idea to go any further. You will just end up degrading image quality too much.

Overall, the Nikon 10-30mm is a great kit lens for the Nikon 1 cameras. I enjoyed shooting with it while testing the Nikon 1 V1 and J1 cameras and managed to take plenty of great images. I believe Nikon did a good job in picking the Nikon 1 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 VR as a kit lens for the Nikon 1 cameras.

38) Where to buy and availability

The Nikon 1 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 VR lens is only available for sale as a part of the Nikon 1 V1 or Nikon 1 J1 camera kits. You can purchase a Nikon 1 V1 + 10-30mm kit or a Nikon 1 J1 + 10-30mm kit in various colors from B&H and other online and local retailers.

39) More image samples

All Images Copyright © Nasim Mansurov, All Rights Reserved. Copying or reproduction is not permitted without written permission from the author.

Nikon 1 V1

The Nikon 1 V1 and J1 cameras, along with 1 Nikkor lenses were kindly provided by B&H – the largest photo reseller in the world that I personally use to buy my photography gear.

1) Nikon 1 V1 Specifications

Main Features:

1. 10.1 Megapixel CX-format (2.7x crop factor) CMOS Image Sensor
2. 13.2mm x 8.8mm sensor size
3. Nikon 1 Lens Mount
4. Compatible with SD, SDHC and SDXC cards
5. 3:2 aspect ratio for still images
6. 12-bit compressed RAW image support
7. Full 1080p HD Cinematic Video at 1080/60i, 1080/30p, 720/60p video resolutions (16:9 aspect ratio)
8. Slow-motion Video at 400fps / 640×240 resolution and 1200fps / 320×120 resolution
9. Hybrid phase detection / contrast-detect Autofocus with up to 135 focus points and an AF-assist illuminator
10. Subject and face tracking
11. ISO sensitivity 100-3200, expandable to ISO 6400 equivalent
12. 3-in. LCD monitor with with 921,000 dots
13. Built-in HDMI, USB and audio ports/inputs
14. 5 Automatic Exposure Scene Modes – Portrait, Landscape, Night Portrait, Close-up and Auto
15. 5 Shooting Modes – Still Image, Smart Photo Selector, Movie, Movie Slow Motion and Motion Snapshot
16. 6 Exposure Modes – Programed Auto (P), Shutter Priority (S), Aperture Priority (A), Manual (M) and Scene Auto Selector
17. Standard, Neutral, Vivid, Monochrome, Portrait and Landscape Picture Controls
18. Accessory hot shoe for Nikon 1 accessories such as GPS, Flash, Microphone, etc
19. Compact and Lightweight Design
20. Features Nikon’s new EXPEED 3 image processing engine
21. Active D-Lighting for shadow highlight recovery
22. Dust-reduction system with Image Sensor Cleaning
23. Electronic color LCD viewfinder with 100% viewfinder frame coverage
24. Electronic lens aperture control
25. Two shutter types – Electronically-controlled vertical-travel focal plane mechanical shutter and electronic shutter
26. Mechanical shutter up to 1/4,000 sec, electronic shutter up to 1/16,000 sec; up to 30 seconds slow shutter for both
27. Flash Sync Speed 1/60 (electronic shutter) and 1/250 (mechanical shutter)
28. Built-in intervalometer
29. Up to 5 fps in standard mode, up to 10, 30 or 60 fps in electronic [Hi] mode
30. Spot, Center-weighted and Matrix metering modes
31. Focus Modes – Auto (AF), Auto AF-S/AF-C selection (AF-A), Single-servo AF (AF-S), Continuous-servo (AF-C), Full-time Servo (AF-F), Manual Focus (MF)
32. An FT1 adapter (must be purchased separately) allows using certain legacy F Mount Nikkor DSLR lenses on the camera
33. Battery Life up to 350 shots per charge
34. Dimensions 4.4″ x 3.0″ x 1.7″ / 113mm x 76mm x 43.5mm
35. Weight: 10.4oz (294g)

Detailed technical specifications for the Nikon 1 V1 are available on Nikonusa.com.

2) Why Mirrorless Nikon?

Why did Nikon decide to enter the interchangeable mirrorless market (also known as “EVIL”- Electronic Viewfinder, Interchangeable Lens), despite the fact that it has a strong presence in both point and shoot and DSLR markets? Because it makes a lot of financial sense for Nikon. Mirrorless falls right in between point and shoot and DSLR in terms of features, size and weight, so it is a nice compromise. Without the need for a reflex mirror, a pentaprism and other heavy and bulky DLSR components, mirrorless cameras can be much lighter and smaller in size. With the ability to use different types of lenses, mirrorless cameras no longer have the disadvantage of point and shoot cameras and open up great opportunities for creative photography – something only the SLR market has been enjoying for many years.

Pioneered by Panasonic in 2008, mirrorless cameras have been in huge demand with a tremendous year after year growth. It makes a lot of sense, because point and shoot cameras have too many limitations and problems, while DSLRs are just too bulky and heavy for everyday use. A mirrorless camera with interchangeable lenses enjoys a sweet spot here. The point and shoot camera market is over-saturated with too many options and with the integration of relatively good compact cameras on mobile devices, the demand for point and shoot cameras will continue to drop. This presents even more growth opportunities for the mirrorless market. A number of manufacturers like Olympus, Pentax, Fuji, Sony and Samsung saw a great opportunity in expanding their markets and introduced a number of mirrorless cameras, while both Canon and Nikon have been quiet, despite statistics and articles like this pouring in from all directions.

It turns out Nikon had been developing its own mirrorless camera since 2006 and spent a considerable amount of R&D time and money to create its own version of a mirrorless “EVIL” camera. That’s how the Nikon 1 camera system, along with 1 NIKKOR lenses came into existence this year, with two new mirrorless cameras – Nikon 1 J1 and Nikon 1 V1, and four 1 NIKKOR lenses – 1 NIKKOR 10mm f/2.8, 1 NIKKOR VR 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6, 1 NIKKOR VR 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6 and 1 NIKKOR VR 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 PD-ZOOM.

3) Nikon 1 CX Sensor

When Nikon officially announced the Nikon 1 system, the majority of the Nikon community, including me, was disappointed. With Sony and Samsung using a large 1.5x crop factor APS-C sensor on their new cameras and rumors of a potential full-frame mirrorless camera coming out soon, we were all surprised to see a much smaller sensor on the Nikon 1 system with a 2.7x crop factor. Even Micro Four Thirds and Sigma’s Foveon sensors are larger in comparison. Many pros and photo enthusiasts had been wanting a compact camera with DSLR image quality for a long time now. Based on the published specs alone, lots of negative feedback started pouring in and Nikon had to defend its decision to use a smaller sensor a number of times so far.

Here is a comparison of image sensor sizes (courtesy of Wikipedia):

Did Nikon make a mistake with the Nikon 1 system because of its smaller sensor? The image sensor technology has been advancing to new levels, especially during the last couple of years. The new full-frame and APC-S sensors we have today perform significantly better even compared to previous generation sensors. It is mind-boggling that we can shoot ISO 102,400 on some cameras and ISO 1600, which was once the limit on film, is now “native” ISO on most compact digital cameras. It is clear, that the image sensor technology is getting better, while pixels are getting smaller. Nikon’s strategy with the Nikon 1 cameras follows this pattern. Nikon is putting a big bet on further image sensor technology advancements that will allow using more pixels in a tight area with very low noise levels. As we have seen with some cameras like the Nikon D7000, Nikon can add more pixels while retaining or even enhancing image quality over a previous generation camera. So I would not be surprised to see a higher resolution Nikon 1 camera in a year or two, with better ISO performance than we see on the Nikon 1 J1/V1 cameras today. Why didn’t Nikon go for a 2x crop factor sensor like the Micro Four Thirds? There are several reasons for this (among others). First, it is the cost. Lower cost is an important advantage of a smaller sensor – if it is cheaper to produce, Nikon can bundle more features with the camera, or sell it at a lower price than the competition. Second, Nikon knows that it can produce a smaller sensor and match or even surpass larger sensors from other manufacturers. Third, Nikon knows that sensor size is what we – photography geeks and gurus talk about. Everybody else does not rarely care about the sensor size – they will choose a camera that is slick, easy and intuitive to use and produces good pictures and videos – exactly the aim of the Nikon 1 line. Fourth, larger sensor does not always equate to better image quality and ISO performance. On top of all this, the new CX sensor does not jeopardize any of the DX camera sales. If Nikon released a mirrorless camera with a 1.5x crop factor sensor like Sony did with their NEX-5n and NEX-7 cameras, it could have potentially hurt its entry-level DX camera sales, which historically have been the strongest source of global sales for Nikon. Now if Nikon had released a 2x crop factor sensor similar to the Micro Four Thirds, the Nikon 1 cameras would have been phenomenal, especially considering all the noise reduction algorithms Nikon successfully developed over the years. But again, if the performance of a 2x sensor would have been close to DSLR performance, Nikon could have risked cannibalizing its entry-level DSLR sales. In addition, a larger sensor would have put more stress on optics, which would result in larger and more expensive lenses. Nikon took a different approach by balancing sensor size, lenses and camera features and decided that a smaller sensor is the way to go.

On the flip side, a smaller sensor means larger depth of field, which translates to less opportunities to isolate subjects from the background – an important factor for many photo enthusiasts and pros out there. Nikon will need fast f/1.4 or even f/1.0-f/1.2 glass to compensate for the depth of field loss. On the other hand, a smaller sensor is an advantage for an autofocus system, since it can hide potential autofocus problems. From Nikon’s marketing standpoint and product placement, CX line is advertised as fun, everyday cameras for home, travel and adventure, DX is a much more serious line for photo enthusiasts and seasonal pros, while FX is top of the line for pros.

What about megapixels? With the current line of Nikon DSLRs, Nikon has clearly demonstrated that it has quit the megapixel race in anything above point and shoot cameras. Canon has been cramming more pixels to their cameras and Nikon only does it when it knows that image quality and high ISO performance are not going to be compromised. The same principle was applied to the Nikon 1 camera – Nikon decided that 10 megapixels is enough for most people, which I do agree with. Adding more pixels to a small sensor like this would have resulted in a lot more noise and it would have been a disadvantage for the Nikon 1 cameras. We should not forget that squeezing more pixels per inch results in more noise and can be very demanding on lenses as well. For example, the recent Sony A77 / A65 and NEX-7 cameras have a record-setting 24 megapixels on a 1.5x APS-C sensor, which puts a big burden on lenses and results in high amounts of noise at the pixel level. A good sensor should have a good balance of megapixels and ISO noise, which I believe the Nikon 1 sensor does.

Taking all of the above into account, Nikon had plenty of reasons to go with a smaller sensor. Whether this was a good or a bad move, we will find out in a few years – only the time will show. Enough said, let’s get back to the Nikon 1 V1 Review and talk about the camera, its features and how it fares against the competition.

4) Camera construction and handling

The Nikon 1 cameras are built to be incredibly small and lightweight. The Nikon 1 V1 is only 113x76x44mm in size – even the smallest Nikon D3100 DSLR is much bulkier and thicker than this camera, measuring 124x97x74mm. Weight-wise, the V1 mirrorless is only 294 grams, while the same D3100 DSLR weighs 455 grams. Here is a side by side comparison image between the two:

This is how the smallest Nikon DSLR fares against the V1. Any other Nikon DSLR, especially something like D300s or D700 looks and feels just massive in comparison. When compared to the mirrorless competition, however, the Nikon V1 is unfortunately both bigger and heavier. The Olympus E-PL3 and the Sony NEX-5n camera bodies are more compact and offer richer specs and less weight. The battery used by the V1 is the same one the Nikon D7000 DSLR has, which certainly helps with battery life, but adds significantly more to the weight of the camera.

When it comes to camera build and construction, the Nikon V1 is built very well. Unlike its plastic Olympus E-PL3 counterpart that has a somewhat similar look and feel, the Nikon 1 V1 has a magnesium alloy body (the Nikon 1 J1 is aluminum). The camera handles quite well and the right-handed grip is OK, although it is no match to the deeply recessed grip on the Sony NEX-5n. I wish Nikon did something similar, even if it meant a slightly larger camera. The NEX-5n handles a world better in comparison, just because of the comfortable grip.

One huge advantage of the V1 over its E-PL3 and NEX-5n competitors is the electronic viewfinder. While it is not as nice and crisp as the EVF on the Sony A77/A65 cameras that I am simultaneously testing, it is good enough for the V1. You can add an electronic viewfinder to E-PL3 and NEX-5n cameras, but at an extra cost and it eats up the accessory hot shoe, so you cannot simultaneously use it with a flash. The camera automatically switches from LCD to EVF when you get close to the viewfinder, with approximately a one second long lag, which is not bad.

As for the button placement and camera layout, Nikon has done a good job, although I do have a couple of complaints. Let’s start from the back of the camera. Most of the back buttons are where they should be and access to the important camera functions are provided with a very minimum number of extra and unnecessary buttons, which is good. Once I got used to the controls, operating the camera was super easy, even while wearing my winter gloves (had to wear those in sub-zero temperatures). The function (F) button on the top of the camera does not get used as much, so it does not bother me. The up/down switch right next to it is very clever – it is used for zooming in/out during playback, changing aperture/shutter speed in various modes and for manual focus. My main complaint is on the rotary camera mode selector switch that I keep accidentally switching while using the camera. I wish there was some sort of a lock on this selector or some other way to switch between different camera modes without the need for this switch. On multiple occasions I found myself in a wrong mode, which was annoying. As for the top of the camera, the on/off switch and the shutter release button are placed well, however, I do not understand the point of having a separate video record button. Once you make a choice to shoot video, the shutter button is what should be used to start recording, not a separate button. The button is also smaller than the shutter button, which makes it even harder to find while looking through the viewfinder. JPEG stills in video mode are captured at 16:9 aspect ratio in reduced HD JPEG size, so this dedicated button is useless in my opinion. Sure, some might find the ability to shoot an image while recording video useful, but those cases are rare. Certainly not worth the extra button, in my opinion. And if you happen to be in a still image mode, pressing this button defaults to 720p/60fps video and you cannot change this behavior either. A rather limited feature indeed.

The typical PASM exposure mode selector dial has also been eliminated from the camera, so you can only change the exposure mode from the camera menu. Other features such as white balance, ISO, image size/format also reside in the camera menu. A simplistic approach when compared to the Olympus E-PL3, but not a huge deal for me, since I do not often change the exposure mode when shooting. Newbies and those coming from the point and shoot world will rarely use it anyway.

What about the LCD? The good news is that the 3″ LCD is large and beautiful. The bad news is that it does not swivel like the NEX-5n and E-PL3 do and it is not touchscreen either. I can live without a touchscreen, but no swivel is a serious disadvantage for the V1, especially for macro and video shooting. It is understandable that the J1 LCD does not offer this due to cost, but the V1, being a higher-end camera should have had an LCD that swivels.

Lastly, my biggest complaint on the camera body is related to the accessory hot shoe that can be used with such devices as GPS, flash, microphone, etc. Speaking of flash, the V1 is considered to be a higher-end camera at least when compared to the J1, so it would have been nice if Nikon provided a standard hot shoe instead. Creative photography with off-camera flash is kind of out of question with the V1, unless you configure slave flashes to trigger in legacy SU-4 mode and for that you would need the Nikon 1 SB-N5 flash to be mounted on the camera anyway. While a full-size speedlight like SB-900 on the Nikon 1 V1 would have looked massive, something like the SB-400 would have been perfect for the Nikon 1. As for the black cover that goes over the accessory hot shoe when it is not in use, it does not tightly lock in place – I have already lost mine because of this. Another design flaw that should have been addressed. Although none of the current mirrorless cameras have a GPS unit, I wish Nikon had it integrated into the camera. A GPS unit is not shipped with the V1 and it will cost you another $150 on top of what the camera costs. It is rather bulky and kind of defeats the purpose of a compact camera. Nikon has been putting GPS into point and shoot cameras like Coolpix AW100, so why couldn’t they integrate it into the V1?

Despite the solid magnesium alloy build, Nikon recommends to use the V1 camera in 32 to 104°F (0 to 40°C) temperatures, with less than 85% humidity (no condensation). The camera is not weather sealed and has no dust protection like some of the advanced DSLR cameras. I would not worry about these recommendations too much though, since I have used the Nikon 1 V1 in temperatures way below the normal 32°F temperatures and it has been working great without any problems since then. I shot in light rain and moderate snow and the camera is still working fine.

5) 1 NIKKOR Lenses

While I will soon be publishing reviews on Nikon 1 system lenses, I decided to share my general thoughts on the lenses and provide some feedback on each lens individually. For all CX lens line-up, Nikon is using a “1 NIKKOR” name, so the 10mm f/2.8 pancake lens is officially called “1 NIKKOR 10mm f/2.8″. Here are the lenses that Nikon released together with Nikon 1 system:

1. 1 NIKKOR 10mm f/2.8
2. 1 NIKKOR VR 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6
3. 1 NIKKOR VR 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6
4. 1 NIKKOR VR 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 PD-ZOOM

In general, the above 1 NIKKOR lenses have very good performance characteristics with great sharpness and colors, something I expected from Nikkor optics. The CX mount has been completely redesigned with more lens contacts, allowing lenses to exchange more data with the camera. For example, both the 1 NIKKOR 10-30mm and the 1 NIKKOR 30-110mm collapsible lenses automatically turn on the camera when the zoom ring is rotated to the zoom range position. The manual focus ring has been eliminated from all CX lenses. Nikon’s implementation of manual focus is rather poor, as discussed further down in the review.

With the sensor crop factor of 2.7x, you have to multiply the focal length of each lens by 2.7 to get an equivalent field of view of a full-frame camera. For example, the 10-30mm lens is equivalent to a 27-81mm lens, while the 10mm pancake is equivalent to a 27mm lens.

Unlike Sony and some other manufacturers, Nikon stays away from image stabilized camera bodies and prefers to integrate VR into lenses instead, which has been working great for many years now. The Nikon 1 system is no exception here, so image stabilization is again done on lenses. VR can be switched from Normal to Active to Off from the camera menu, unlike the rest of the DSLR VR-enabled Nikon lenses that have a VR on/off switch on the lens. Nikon initially had a problem with VR on 1 NIKKOR lenses, which would result in occasional blurry images with VR turned on. This issue has been identified and corrected through firmware updates for each VR lens (see links below). The 1 NIKKOR lenses, by the way, are the first Nikon lenses with upgradeable firmware.

The 1 NIKKOR 10mm f/2.8 pancake lens is a very compact and sharp lens, which is a great fit for the Nikon 1 system. I wish it was an f/2.0 lens (or faster) though, which would have made it a more useful lens for low-light photography. It has two big weaknesses – lack of VR and obviously inability to zoom, so I do not think it will be that popular among first time buyers. The 1 NIKKOR VR 10-35mm, on the other hand is perfect for the Nikon 1 system. It is compact when collapsed, has a great zoom range of 10-30mm (27-81mm equivalent), has VR and good performance characteristics. I used the 30-110mm telephoto lens (81mm-297mm) the least, mainly because I felt that its starting range was too long for everyday photography. Lastly, the 1 NIKKOR VR 10-100mm is just a monster that is bigger than many Nikon DSLR zoom lenses. While it is a more or less specialized lens, especially for videography (due to its ability to silently zoom via a dedicated zoom button on the lens), it is just too darn big and bulky for the Nikon 1 cameras in my opinion.

The 1 NIKKOR VR 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 firmware update 1.02 can be downloaded from here, the 1 NIKKOR VR 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6 firmware update 1.02 can be downloaded from here and the 1 NIKKOR 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 PD-ZOOM firmware update 1.01 can be downloaded from here. Make sure to download and update firmware on these VR lenses before engaging VR. Overall, VR is very effective on 1 NIKKOR lenses and I would recommend to leave it on when shooting hand-held.

If you already own Nikon F mount DSLR lenses, you can use them on the V1 with a special FT1 mount adapter (must be purchased separately). The adapter is attached to the Nikon 1 V1 and the F Mount Nikkor lens is then attached to the adapter. The FT1 will add an angle of view of 2.7 times that of the F Mount Nikkor lens’ focal length. For example, the Nikon 50mm f/1.8G will have an effective field of view of a 135mm lens.

Nikon did not hide the fact that it is working on some specialized fixed focal length lenses for portraiture and other needs, so we soon might see something like 1 NIKKOR 18mm f/1.4, which is equivalent to a 50mm lens. Nikon needs to make fast glass for the Nikon 1 cameras quickly, because that’s exactly what it lacks at the moment.

6) The new EXPEED 3 Processor

The Nikon 1 line is the first to get the new dual-core EXPEED 3 image processor. The new processor can handle a lot more throughput than the previous EXPEED 2 processor, which translates to faster frames per second, faster in-camera image processing, faster video and allows for extra features such as Slow Motion video, Smart Photo Selector and Motion Snapshot (discussed in more detail below). In fact, the Nikon 1 is currently the fastest Nikon camera for capturing images and video. When used in Electornic Shutter (HI) mode, it is capable of capturing 10 FPS while tracking a subject and up to 60 FPS in full resolution without subject tracking, which is pretty impressive. The good news for the DSLR community, is that we will be seeing some of these nice features in the upcoming Nikon DSLRs.

7) Camera Menu, Features and Responsiveness

Before I started testing all three cameras, I decided not to touch camera manuals. I wanted to see how easy it is to operate these cameras for a person that is not familiar with them. The Nikon 1 V1 camera menu is very intuitive and easy to use. Depending on which mode you are in, the camera will only display what you should be seeing and switching between playback, mode menu and setup is super easy with the rotating dial on the bottom right side of the camera. Out of the three mirrorless cameras I have tested, the Nikon 1 V1 has the best menu system in my opinion. The Sony NEX-5n menu is also pretty good, but has a lot more options in comparison, which is not necessarily good for most people out there. The worst of the 3 is the Olympus E-PL3. It has a horrid menu system. It sure is packed with a boatload of options and sub-menus, making it very hard to operate the camera. It just sucks in comparison. I will elaborate more on this in a separate E-PL3 review, but I hated the Olympus E-PL3 for this reason alone, despite the fact that its image quality is very good.

On the other hand, the simplistic menu approach of the V1 is missing some serious functions that should be there. For example, image review after a photo is taken cannot be turned off. When shooting a time lapse in very cold temperatures (see more on time lapse below), I wanted to prolong the battery life by turning off image preview and could not find a way to do it. I ended up switching image preview to EVF by pressing the “DISP” button, which I thought would not waste the battery as much as the LCD, but it is just my assumption. In-camera editing options are also very limited to cropping and resizing, which is surprising, since JPEG shooters would probably find those features useful. No HDR and video editing options that Nikon has been bundling on the latest DSLRs. Exposure bracketing is also missing, but that’s understandable, since Nikon does not provide bracketing features on its entry-level DSLRs either. By contrast, the Sony NEX-5n has all of these integrated in its firmware, including in-camera panorama and 3D image processing (and much more).

Camera responsiveness is a mixed bag. The startup and shutdown time, along with switching from EVF to LCD and vice-versa take about one second, which is not bad. When the camera goes to sleep mode, however, the wake-up time is about 2 seconds, which is way too long. I missed some shots at Bosque Del Apache and other places because of this. While you can regulate the sleep timer through “Auto power off” menu setting, you cannot change the timer to completely shut off the camera – another important feature that is missing from the camera menu.

One welcome addition, on the other hand, is a built-in intervalometer for time lapse photography. Sony DSLRs and NEX cameras are notoriously bad for time lapse photography, because they miss an intervalometer and the only option is to buy an accessory to shoot images in sequences. You can put the Nikon V1 on a tripod, set camera parameters, set the interval and the total number of shots (up to 999 shots allowed) and start the sequence. I have shot a number of time lapses and the result came out great. Just remember to set the exposure and white balance manually when shooting in JPEG format. Here is a sample time lapse I shot with the Nikon 1 V1:

The Nikon 1 V1 also sports a dual shutter system that can capture images with either a mechanical or an electronic shutter. The mechanical shutter limits the speed of the camera to 4 frames per second with autofocus, while switching to the electronic shutter can speed it up all the way to 60 fps (a theoretical ability, since the buffer can only accommodate a maximum of 30 images). There are also other differences between a mechanical and an electronic shutter, such as flash sync speed (mechanical 1/250 sec, electronic 1/60 sec) and maximum shutter speed (mechanical 1/4000 sec, electronic 1/16,000 sec).

The great Auto ISO feature we normally see on Nikon DSLRs is replaced by a much more simplified Auto ISO capability. There are three pre-defined Auto ISO modes to choose from – A3200 Auto (100-3200), A800 Auto (100-800) and A400 Auto (100-400). Neither of these options allow setting a minimum shutter speed, which is a huge drawback. There is no way to tell when camera decides to use which ISO and having no control over this threshold is very unfortunate. I understand the point of simplification of this feature for the J1 camera, but Nikon should have provided the ISO threshold option on the V1 camera.

The Smart Photo Selector and the Motion Snapshot modes (on the exposure mode dial) are interesting innovations, but not very useful/practical, in my opinion. The Smart Photo Selector works by firing 20 images in electronic shutter mode before and after the shutter button is pressed (starts when the shutter-button is half-pressed). It then analyzes these twenty images and picks the best 4-5 images automatically for you based on a number of factors, including image blur. To be honest, I am not sold on this feature – but that’s most probably because I am an advanced user and do not like some electronic algorithm to pick an image for me. I would rather do that myself. If a situation is critically important, I would rather set the camera to 60 FPS and spray and pray. As for the Motion Snapshot feature, it feels to be incomplete. The sound effects are limited to a few boring ones and worst of all, the movie files that are produced do not have these sounds embedded into them. You have to use a special Short Movie Creator software to convert it to what you would see on the camera. The movie is saved in MOV format, while the snapshot is saved in JPEG format, separate files. Motion snapshot is too short as well – the 60 FPS capture rate is played back in slow motion at 24 FPS or 2.5 seconds total.

8) Autofocus / Manual Focus Performance and Metering

The Nikon 1 system is also the first Nikon camera to have a hybrid autofocus system – a combination of phase and contrast detect autofocus. Nikon claims that it is very responsive, fast and accurate, which as I have verified, is indeed an accurate statement. And that’s with an impressive 135 focus points! In AF-S (single servo) mode, the camera uses contrast-detect AF and you can use any of the 135 focus points to acquire focus. Surprisingly, the AF performance in AF-S mode is very good, not the sluggish contrast detect we get in Live View modes of current DSLRs. The moment you switch to AF-C (continuous servo) mode, the camera changes to the hybrid AF mode with 73 focus points and does an excellent job at tracking movement in daylight conditions. In indoor environments with less light, the camera seems to switch to the same contrast detect mode and AF slows down.

So far I have taken around 2 thousand images with the V1 and I have yet to find an image that is out of focus. Yes, it does have to do with a larger depth of field due to the smaller sensor on the camera, but I have had a lot of blurry images on point and shoot cameras with even smaller sensors before and the V1 is a world better than any of them. In very difficult low-light, low-contrast situations, the camera might not be able to acquire focus and you will see the focus point flash in red when that happens. Switching to AF-S mode activates the green AF-assist lamp, which helps a great deal in acquiring focus on close subjects.

In short, Nikon’s implementation of hybrid autofocus rocks. I very much hope that this technology will make its way to Live View / Video Modes on future DSLRs. This new AF engine is probably the biggest advantage of the Nikon 1 system over its current competitors.

On the flip side, since the manual focus ring has been completely eliminated from all 1 NIKKOR lenses, manual focus has to be performed through the camera, which is a rather cumbersome and an inefficient process. You first have to switch the AF mode to MF through a dedicated AF button (bottom part of the rotary dial), then you have to hit the middle “OK” button to start manual focus operation. The up/down switch on the top back of the camera is used for zooming in and out, while the rotary dial is used to move the zoom area when pressed and change focus when rotated. Zooming in greatly decreases the resolution, which makes it difficult to obtain precise focus – a similar problem Nikon D90 DSLR has in Live View mode. This problem is obviously only related to the absence of the focus ring on the 1 NIKKOR lenses.

9) Movie Recording

Nikon 1 V1 has some impressive movie recording capabilities, again, we have not seen anything like this on any of the Nikon cameras previously. Full 1080p HD mode (H.264 compression codec in MOV file format) can be recorded at 30 fps and 1080i at 60 fps, while smaller 720 HD movies can be recorded at 60 fps as well. Unlike some of the entry-level Nikon DSLRs, the V1 is not limited to automatic exposure control for videos, which means that you can fully control the exposure in video mode. Just switch the camera to manual mode through the video recording menu and set your shutter speed and aperture to whatever you want. The camera LCD will reflect these changes and you will see exactly what you are capturing. But the biggest surprise here is the ability to autofocus and track subjects while recording videos, which works really well. Say goodbye to a typical camcorder, because the V1 can easily replace one. Video recording is limited to 20 minutes, which is more than enough for most situations.

As I have already pointed out, the Nikon 1 V1 has two separate buttons to record stills and video. This was primarily done to be able to take stills while recording video, but to be honest, I do not really see much value in this feature. I do not think it is worth having a dedicated video button on the top of the camera. A better approach would have been to designate one of the buttons on the back of the camera to capture stills if a video is being recorded. I would rather use one button to capture both stills and video.

One feature I was excited about when I got the camera was slow-motion video recording. Nikon 1 V1 has two slow-motion recording modes – 640×240/400 fps and 320×120/1200 fps, both limited to 5 seconds of action (which translates to roughly 66 total seconds on 400 fps videos, since slow motion is played back at 30 fps). While the resolution is rather low, the 400 fps videos are not bad for posting videos online. The catch with slow motion video is that it requires a lot of available light. In normal indoor environments slow motion videos come out too dark and the video would often flicker. Increasing ISO and decreasing lens aperture definitely helps; you can still fully control the exposure and even use exposure compensation if the scene is too light or too dark. The 320×120 resolution on 1200 fps videos is too small and unusable even for the web in my opinion. Here are a couple of slow-motion videos I shot at 400 FPS:

VR works great for video recording, but you have to be careful when panning the camera with VR turned on, because it will occasionally bump the camera up or down. This is normal VR behavior and the same thing would happen if you were to pan while taking stills.

Other than this, all videos look great with plenty of sharpness, colors and contrast.

10) Dynamic Range / Active D-Lighting

Smaller sensor typically means less dynamic range and with a relatively small 13.2mm x 8.8mm sensor, the dynamic range of the Nikon 1 V1 is nothing to brag about – it is obviously worse than on 1.5x crop sensors, including the Sony NEX-5n. On the other hand, shadow details on RAW images do not look too bad, even when compared to the Olympus E-PL3. As with all digital cameras, increasing camera ISO also decreases dynamic range, so shoot at base ISO of 100 if you want to preserve the most amount of information on your photographs.

HDR photographers won’t be happy with this camera, because it has no built-in HDR mode, and it does not offer any sort of exposure bracketing. Your only option is to set the camera to manual mode, then take images at different shutter speeds.

As for Active D-Lighting, if you shoot RAW and do not use Nikon’s Capture NX2 product, you should just turn it off. For all other cases, leaving Active D-Lighting On works great.

Let’s see how the camera does in ISO performance against other cameras. Choose the next page below.

11) ISO Performance at low ISOs (ISO 100-800)

Some technical junk:

1. White Balance: Auto, changed to “Custom”: 4660 Temp, +26 Tint in Lightroom
2. EXIF information is preserved in the images
3. Tested with 1 NIKKOR VR 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 lens
4. Aperture: f/8.0
5. Manual Focus
6. Active D-Lighting: Off
7. Long exposure NR: Off
8. High ISO HR: Off
9. Image Format: RAW/NEF
10. Imported images into Lightroom and cropped to 100% – no resizing was performed in Photoshop
11. No exposure adjustments were performed in Lightroom (besides White Balance)
12. Lightroom sharpening: 25, 1.0, 25, 0 (default)
13. Lightroom export: sRGB JPEG Quality 80

Let’s take a look at how the Nikon 1 V1 performs at low ISOs. Here are some 100% crops at ISO 100, 200, 400 and 800:

Base ISO 100 looks somewhat clean, similar to DX performance, but ISO 200 already shows some noise.

ISO 400 adds a little more noise and the shadows get a little grainier, but overall it still looks pretty good. ISO 800, on the other hand, seems to be adding larger grain than ISO 400, but image detail is still preserved well.

12) High ISO Performance (ISO 1600-6400)

Let’s see what happens when ISO is boosted to much higher levels:

Even larger grains at ISO 1600 and the shadows get noticeably grainier as well. Details still look very good though. ISO 3200, which is still native ISO, is where things get considerably worse. Noise almost doubles and we see loss of details and colors.

When ISO is boosted to 6400, large grains and artifacts show up all over the image.

Overall, the ISO performance of the Nikon 1 V1 camera is very impressive for a small CX sensor, especially when compared to the competition. Let’s see how it fares against the Micro Four Thirds sensor. Select the next page below.

Let’s take a look at ISO performance of the Olympus E-PL3 that has a Micro Four Thirds sensor, which that is about twice bigger than the Nikon 1 V1 CX sensor. The base ISO of the Olympus sensor starts at ISO 200 and it can go all the way to ISO 12,800. Please note that the E-PL3 has a 12.3 megapixel sensor, so I had to move my camera setup back and forth to get a similar field of view. No image resizing and rescaling was performed in Photoshop – these are 100% crops. All images were shot at the same shutter speed and aperture values.

13) Nikon 1 V1 vs Olympus E-PL3 Low ISO Comparison (ISO 200-800)

Here is a comparison of both cameras at ISO 200 (Left: Nikon 1 V1, Right: Olympus E-PL3):

At base ISO 200, both cameras look about the same. The Olympus E-PL3 looks a tad sharper than the Nikon 1 V1, most likely due to better focus or optics.

At ISO 400, the Nikon 1 V1 looks slightly noisier, but the difference is not big.

Looks like ISO 800 is also more or less the same as ISO 400, with E-PL3 having a slight advantage. Let’s compare the two at higher ISOs now.

14) Nikon 1 V1 vs Olympus E-PL3 High ISO Comparison (ISO 1600-12800)

Here is ISO 1600 performance:

Now here is where things get interesting. The Olympus E-PL3 gets significantly worse at ISO 1600, which is clearly visible across the frame, especially in the shadows; the grain is much bigger in size. Now the Nikon 1 V1 clearly takes the lead – just take a look at the difference in the shadows.

The situation is even worse at ISO 3200 for the Olympus. Large grain specks appear all over the image and in the shadows. Image detail is lost by a great deal. The Nikon 1 V1 again wins here, I would say by a huge margin.

ISO 6400 is even worse for the Olympus E-PL3 – now the grain is killing the details. Letters are now mixed with grain and the shadow detail is completely lost. To be honest, I do not see the reason why Olympus decided to provide ISO 12800 capability – it is simply useless, as can be seen below:

15) Nikon 1 V1 vs Olympus E-PL3 Summary

As you can see from the image crops above, both cameras perform about the same at ISO speeds between 100 and 800, although the Olympus E-PL3 seems to have slightly cleaner images. The same cannot be said about its high ISO performance though – the Nikon 1 V1 takes over from ISO 1600 and clearly has an advantage in the amount of noise, especially in the shadows – all the way to ISO 6400. The ISO 12800 on the Olympus E-PL3 is useless; I do not even know why Olympus decided to leave it as an option. The 2 megapixel advantage does not make much difference either; even if the image is down-sampled to 10 megapixels, the Nikon still wins in high ISO performance. So much for the E-PL3 sensor that is twice bigger in size. A quick side note – Olympus used a 3 year old Micro Four Thirds sensor on the E-PL3 camera. The new Micro 4/3 sensors on such cameras as Panasonic DMC-GH2/G3 perform much better in comparison. Unfortunately, I could not obtain a GH2/G3 sample on time to perform additional comparisons.

The Nikon 1 V1 also has a clear lead in the autofocus area – its hybrid AF system is much faster in comparison, especially in daylight environment. In low-light situations, both cameras seem to autofocus about the same with contract detect AF. The Nikon 1 V1 has a built-in EVF, while you have to buy one for the Olympus E-PL3, so that’s another advantage on behalf of the Nikon. I also prefer the ergonomics and the button layout of the Nikon 1 V1 (except for the video recording button) – the E-PL3 has 6 tiny buttons scattered on the back of the camera (excluding the dial), while the Nikon 1 V1 has everything neatly organized with large and accessible buttons. On the other hand, the Olympus has a traditional PASM selector on the top of the camera and its video recording button is neatly placed on the top right side of the camera rear – something I wish Nikon did the same with the V1.

The biggest difference between the two, in my opinion, is the menu system. The Olympus E-PL3 has the worst menu system I have seen to date. It truly is horrendous when compared to the Nikon 1 V1 and it took me a long time to figure basic things out, like finding where to change image format from JPEG to RAW. To change ISO, you have to go two levels deep from the Custom Menu and find it somewhere in the middle of the menu. It was ridiculous and I wasted too much of my precious time figuring basic things out. I would never buy the E-PL3 if I were a beginner – the camera will scare the hell out of any beginner for sure. Sure, it has some great features like bracketing (exposure, white balance, ISO, etc), multiple exposure, customizable buttons and much more, but they are of little use if they are not easily accessible. Where Olympus right now truly has the lead is in the lens department – Olympus has a wide array of lenses that cover everything from wide angle and macro to portraits/telephoto. Nikon is committed to the CX format and we should be seeing a wider selection of all kinds of lenses very soon.

Overall, I personally would not buy the Olympus E-PL3 for the above reasons. Despite its smaller sensor size, the Nikon 1 V1 is a better camera in many ways. Oh and one more thing, coming from a Nikon DSLR background, I do prefer the aspect ratio of the V1 instead of the Micro Four Thirds 4:3 aspect ratio.

Let’s see how the Nikon 1 V1 compares to the Sony NEX-5n, which has a much larger 1.5x crop factor sensor – a similar size sensor used on the Nikon D5100 and D7000 DLSRs. I had a hard time matching up images, because there is a huge difference in resolution – the Nikon 1 V1 sensor is 10 MP, while the Sony NEX-5n is 16 MP. Therefore, the Sony crops below look a little bigger.

16) Nikon 1 V1 vs Sony NEX-5n Low ISO Comparison (ISO 100-800)

Here is a comparison of base ISO 100 on both cameras:

At base ISO 100, both cameras seem to perform about the same, although the shadows on the Sony seem to be a little brighter, probably because of higher dynamic range.

ISO 200 seems to be a little cleaner on the Sony NEX-5n.

The same with ISO 400 – the Sony NEX-5n is a tad cleaner.

And even at ISO 800, the NEX-5n has a very slight advantage over the V1. The strange thing is, while the shadows are a little brighter, they also seem to be slightly noisier on the Sony. Let’s see how the cameras compare at high ISO levels now.

17) Nikon 1 V1 vs Sony NEX-5n High ISO Comparison (ISO 1600-25600)

Here is ISO 1600:

Unlike the Olympus E-PL3, the Sony NEX-5n does a great job at ISO 1600. There is very little grain in the image and I would say that it looks better compared to the Nikon.

Increasing ISO to 3200 adds more noise to both images, but the Sony NEX-5n still looks better. Grain is smaller and a little more manageable than on the Nikon 1 V1.

Nikon’s maximum ISO boost is 6400 and it is the last image that I can compare against the Sony NEX-5n, which has two extra ISO levels. Again, the cameras are comparable, but the Sony NEX-5n seems to be slightly better. Both cameras seem to retain good colors at high ISOs. Here are two extra ISO levels on the NEX-5n:

The ISO 12800 crop looks pretty good, but the ISO 25600 shot is unusable for my taste.

17a) Nikon 1 V1 vs Sony NEX-5n Down-Sampled High ISO Comparison (ISO 800-6400)

Comparing sensors with different resolutions can be challenging. The above comparisons show pixel-level performance, which is typically in favor of a lower resolution sensor. Without a doubt, a camera with more pixels per inch equals more noise due to simple physics – the smaller the pixel, the more the noise. Let’s see what happens when images from both cameras are normalized, which in this case means the Sony NEX-5n 16 MP image gets reduced to 10 MP. Since there are many different ways to down-sample an image in Photoshop, I tried a few different methods and came to a conclusion that the regular “Bicubic (best for smooth gradients)” resizing algorithm results in the least amount of noise, which is what I used for the below images.

As expected, the results are in favor of a high-resolution camera, which in this case is the NEX-5n:

The differences are obvious right at ISO 800 – the NEX-5n looks very clean with smaller grain. In fact, if you take the ISO 1600 sample from the NEX-5n and put it against the ISO 800 sample from the V1, you will see that NEX-5n still looks a tad better, which means that there is more than a stop of difference between the two, when down-sampled to the same resolution. The NEX-5n images will also look sharper due to this down-sampling technique.

The same story with ISO 1600 – NEX-5n looks very clean in comparison.

When putting NEX-5n ISO 3200 against V1 ISO 1600, the image from the NEX-5n is still a tad cleaner, so there is still over a stop of difference between the two.

ISO 6400 on the V1 has plenty of large grain, while the same on the NEX-5n looks cleaner with smaller grain.

Again, this test shows what happens when both cameras are at 10 MP – the extra 6 MP of resolution on the NEX-5n results in over a stop of high ISO advantage.

18) Nikon 1 V1 vs Sony NEX-5n Summary

Initially, I published only 100% crops from the top of the page, where I show the pixel performance between the two cameras. I received a number of complaints from our readers that the test was rather biased, because it showed the Nikon 1 V1 performing almost as good as the Sony NEX-5n, which has a lot more resolution (this was despite the fact that I clearly stated that when images are down-sampled, the NEX-5n would have over a stop of advantage). Hence, I added one more test to this page showing “normalized” images at 10 MP, which clearly shows that the NEX-5n has over a stop of advantage compared to the V1. Don’t forget that the sensor of the NEX-5n is over 3 times larger than the one on Nikon 1 V1, so the V1 stands its ground really well with its tiny sensor. A larger size sensor also means larger lenses – and that’s Sony’s biggest weakness. It has a very compact camera body, but much bigger camera lenses (with the exception of the 16mm pancake lens). When shooting with mirrorless cameras, the Nikon 1 V1 fit my jacket pocket much easier than the Sony NEX-5n.

At the same time, a large sensor also means two things: shallower depth of field and better dynamic range – two major factors that work in NEX-5n’s favor. Sony has a few other advantages, such as swivel / touchscreen LCD, in-camera editing, HDR, panorama and 3D modes, but lacks a serious feature that the Nikon 1 V1 has, which is a built-in electronic viewfinder (EVF). An excellent high-resolution OLED viewfinder can be purchased separately, but for $350 more; plus it eats up the same socket that can be used for mounting a flash unit. I also really like the ergonomics of the NEX-5n when compared to the V1. The grip is great, much better than the little bump on the front of the V1.

Sony’s menu system is very good, but has a lot more options than on the Nikon, so beginners might find the Nikon 1 V1 easier to operate. Nikon’s stronghold is its hybrid autofocus, which works faster than Sony’s AF. So the Nikon is clearly better at tracking and shooting action / sports. On the other hand, Sony lenses have a manual focus ring and manual focus operation is much easier. Simply turning the focus ring automatically zooms in at high resolution and you can use the touchscreen to move to any area of the image you want. You could even zoom in all the way to 9.5x for even closer and more precise focus adjustment.

Comparing these two cameras, I would say that they are targeted at different audiences. The Sony NEX-5n suits photo enthusiasts and pros that shoot landscapes and portraits, because of a larger sensor, more megapixels, shallower depth of field, higher dynamic range and great image quality / ISO performance. The Nikon 1 V1, on the other hand, is a great everyday camera that can shoot action and sports – something soccer moms and birders will appreciate.

Since I have been simultaneously testing the Sony A77 and A65 cameras, I could not resist the temptation to compare the Nikon 1 V1 ISO performance against the highest resolution APS-C sensor in the world. The Sony NEX-7 mirrorless, A65 and A77 DSLRs all share the same 24 megapixel sensor, so the below crops should be about the same for these three cameras. The translucent mirror on the A65 and A77 cameras does actually block some light, so the NEX-7 might actually perform a tad better. Again, matching field of view was difficult, so the below images appear slightly larger. Let’s take a look!

19) Nikon 1 V1 vs Sony A65/A77 Low ISO Comparison (ISO 100-800)

Here is base ISO 100 comparison:

The base ISO performance of the A65/A77 cameras seems to be on par with Nikon 1 V1 performance. Noise levels are relatively low both in highlights and shadows.

ISO 200 is also clean on both with a slight advantage on behalf of the Sony.

ISO 400 does not change much and noise levels are also comparable.

At ISO 800 we start seeing bigger grain on the Sony A65/A77 sensors and the Nikon 1 V1 takes over, especially in the shadows.

20) Nikon 1 V1 vs Sony A65/A77 High ISO Comparison (ISO 1600-16000)

And here is ISO 1600:

The Sony sensor looks similar to the Olympus E-PL3 in terms of pixel-level performance at high ISOs. Anything above ISO 800 is very grainy, including ISO 1600. As can be seen from the above crops, the Nikon 1 V1 has much less and smaller grains in the image. But mind you, we are comparing 24 MP versus 10 MP!

ISO 3200 is even worse for the 24 MP Sony sensor – noise levels are very high with large grains and there is visible loss of details across the frame. Some colors are also lost as a result. The Nikon 1 V1 looks much cleaner in comparison (again, with a lot less pixels).

And ISO 6400 looks pretty unusable for my taste when viewed at 100% on the Sony A65/A77 cameras. Too much detail and colors are lost.

It is unfortunate that Sony is allowing ISO 12800 and 16000 on the new sensor for marketing purposes. These images look horrid and completely unusable.

20a) Nikon 1 V1 vs Sony A65/A77 Down-Sampled High ISO Comparison (ISO 800-6400)

Let’s see how the sensors compare when the Sony A65/A77 image is down-sampled to 10 MP. Obviously, there is a huge difference in resolution here, which works in A65/A77′s advantage. Here is ISO 800 down-sized to 10 MP:

Similar to the NEX-5n, the difference between A65/A77 and the V1 is a little over 1 stop when normalized. Here is ISO 1600:

At ISO 1600, the difference seems to be slightly less, right around 1 stop. If you took the ISO 1600 crop from the A65/A77 sensor and compared it to the ISO 800 crop from the V1, they would have roughly the same amount of noise, with slight differences here and there.

ISO 3200 is not much different than ISO 1600 in terms of noise – roughly 1 stop of difference. And finally, here is the not so pretty ISO 6400:

21) Nikon 1 V1 vs Sony A65/A77 Summary

I won’t go into feature differences between these cameras, because we are not comparing apples to apples here. But one thing is clear – high resolution and small pixel size equal more noise for the new Sony sensor, when viewed at the pixel level. When down-sampled and resized to 10 MP, however, the Sony A77/A65 still shows superior performance compared to the Nikon V1 at high ISOs. The difference is not as big as between the Sony NEX-5n and the Nikon V1 (which is more than a stop), but a little less – I would say about about a stop. If you take the ISO 800 crop from the Nikon 1 V1 and compare it to the ISO 1600 crop from the Sony A65/A77, the noise levels will look about the same; maybe except for the shadows, where the Nikon 1 V1 seems to be working its firmware magic to suppress more noise. If you compare the NEX-5n high ISO crops to the A65/A77 crops, you will see that the former has slightly less noise when both are down-sampled to 10 MP.

Put into a different perspective, when down-sampled, the Sony A65/A77 looks slightly worse than the Sony NEX-5n at ISO levels above 400 (but beats it at low ISOs due to much higher resolution). Both are better than the Nikon 1 V1 by a stop or more at pretty much all ISO levels.

Last, but not least, I wanted to show you how the new CX sensor compares to Nikon’s full-frame FX sensor from the D700/D3 DSLR cameras. Again, the comparison is far from being fair, so this comparison is provided simply as a reference. Please note that D700′s base ISO is 200, but the camera provides an option to boost to ISO 100.

22) Nikon 1 V1 vs Nikon D700 Low ISO Comparison (ISO 100-800)

Here is ISO 100 on both:

Nikon’s legendary full-frame sensor is a reference of practically noise-free performance at low ISOs.

While the Nikon 1 V1 does pretty well with noise, the difference is clear, especially at ISO 800 – the D700 is very smooth in comparison.

23) Nikon 1 V1 vs Nikon D700 High ISO Comparison (ISO 1600-25600)

Let’s take a look at what happens at high ISO levels:

At ISO 1600, the Nikon 1 V1 performs well, considering how small of a sensor it has compared to the full-frame D700.

Nikon 1 V1 loses plenty of detail at ISO 3200 when compared to the D700, which stays relatively clean and perfectly usable.

Boosted to ISO 6400, the Nikon 1 V1 suffers and plenty of details are lost in comparison.

The extra 2 ISO levels on the D700 are very grainy, pretty much unusable for my taste.

24) Nikon 1 V1 vs Nikon D700 Summary

I was rather surprised to see how well the Nikon 1 V1 performs against Nikon’s high-end full-frame sensor. With a more than 7x smaller surface area, the Nikon 1 V1 is only about ~2 stops behind the D700 sensor in ISO performance. This is great news for the DSLR users, because it shows how superb the future sensors will be on the upcoming Nikon DSLRs. Another good news for the Nikon 1 V1 is color reproduction – colors look almost as good as on the D700.

Again, the above comparison is provided only as a reference, since we are comparing a small-sensor mirrorless camera to a high-end DSLR.

25) Summary and Image Samples

Overall, I am impressed by the Nikon 1 V1 – it is a solid, high-quality camera with excellent performance characteristics. While my initial thoughts after the Nikon 1 system was announced were rather negative, after using the camera actively for over a month, I got to like it, at least when compared to the competition. It does have a few problems though, as I have expressed in this review. The biggest source of complaints for the Nikon 1 system is its tiny CX sensor, which is almost twice smaller than Micro Four Thirds, over 3 times smaller than APS-C and over 7 times smaller than full-frame. As a result, many dubbed the Nikon 1 system as a glorified and expensive point and shoot camera, which it is not.

As I have shown in my ISO tests, the Nikon 1 CX sensor performs very well for its size. It easily beats the Olympus E-PL3 (which unfortunately uses an old Micro 4/3 sensor) at high ISOs, even when the latter is down-sampled to 10 MP. Both Sony NEX-5n and Sony A77/A65 sensors have a resolution advantage over the Nikon 1 V1, with the latter having more than twice the number of pixels. This obviously translates to better performance when high-resolution images are down-sampled to 10 MP, with NEX-5n leading the comparison with over a full stop of difference and A65/A77 with a slightly worse 1 stop of difference. But then, we are comparing a much smaller CX sensor to an APS-C size sensor used in DSLR camera bodies. It is expected that the Sony cameras perform better and they should, given their 3x sensor size advantage. Had Nikon used a larger, more equivalent sensor, we would have seen better ISO performance. How does Nikon achieve these kinds of low noise levels at high ISOs with such a small sensor? The answer lies in noise-reduction techniques that Nikon has developed over the years. It has done it on DSLRs like Nikon D3s and D7000 and it is also doing the same thing on the Nikon 1 V1 / J1 cameras. Images coming out of the sensor get polished and noise levels reduced, even at the RAW image level. Some might call this a dirty technique or cheating, but I do not see anything wrong with doing that. At the end of the day, it is about what I get from a camera. An average user would not care if the manufacturer uses noise reduction at high ISOs – as long as the image looks clean and details are retained (and they are). Nikon decided that 10 megapixels is good enough for most people, which I do agree with. As I have already said before, a good general-purpose sensor should have a good balance of megapixels and ISO noise, which the Nikon 1 sensor does with 10 megapixels on its small 13.2×8.8mm CX sensor. And its color reproduction is also very good, on par with modern Nikon DSLR cameras.

Other advantages of the Nikon 1 V1 camera worth noting are the built-in electronic view finder (which turned out to be a big deal, since none of the other mirrorless cameras I tested have one; you have to purchase them separately), instant hybrid autofocus, very quick image and video recording speeds, great ergonomics (except for a few annoyances, as pointed out on the first page of the review), built-in intervalometer, excellent metering, great battery life and ease of use. On the flip side, the smaller sensor results in larger depth of field and lower dynamic range, camera menu is missing some important features, no live exposure preview in manual mode, Auto ISO is implemented poorly with no customization options, lack of in-camera editing, non-swivel/non-touchscreen LCD and a few other annoyances. Except for the sensor size and the camera body, most of these issues can be addressed through firmware updates. To compensate for the large depth of field issue, Nikon should quickly release fast-aperture f/1.2-f/1.4 lenses that can help isolate subjects better than the current slow lenses available today. The 1 NIKKOR lenses are as good as all other Nikkor lenses in terms of sharpness, contrast and colors. I am glad that Nikon has incorporated much more advanced capabilities to these lenses, which give us the ability to fix lens issues via firmware updates – something we have never been able to do before. In fact, one serious issue with image stabilization / VR has already been identified by Nikon and firmware updates for all new VR lenses have been recently released.

As for the cost of the camera, at first, its price of $900 for a single 10-30mm lens kit sounds steep, but then compare it to the Olympus E-PL3 + 14-24mm kit that costs $679, which quickly goes up to $860 with an EVF added. Or the Sony NEX-5n, which easily goes over $1K with an EVF added (granted you would be getting a much better OLED EVF). True, the E-PL3 and the NEX-5n come with flash units, but you cannot even remotely compare those little flashes to the SB-N5 speedlight for the Nikon 1 system. To me, they are no better than the crappy built-in flash on the Nikon 1 J1 camera. Oh, and once you mount an EVF on either the E-PL3 or the NEX-5n, you cannot simultaneously use the flash, which is not a problem for the Nikon 1 V1. The biggest difference is once again the sensor size, but as I have demonstrated in this review, a larger sensor does not automatically mean better image quality. In fact, as in the case with the Sony NEX-5n, larger sensors require larger lenses, which sort of defeats the purpose of a compact camera system.

At the end of the day, it is all about one’s needs. Pros, semi-pros and photo enthusiasts that need a smaller camera than a DSLR will probably choose the Sony NEX-5n/NEX-7 cameras for their larger sensors, more megapixels, higher dynamic range, etc., while the Nikon 1 V1 is a great fit for everyday and fast-action photography. It will be interesting to see how Nikon will continue to develop the Nikon 1 system. I hope that the issues pointed out above will be addressed through firmware updates and better and richer features will be delivered in upcoming Nikon 1 cameras. We should be seeing more lens choices very soon, so I am looking forward to another evaluation of the Nikon 1 cameras when those lenses are announced.

Meanwhile, I am excited about the upcoming DSLR cameras, because I am hoping that some of the great technology found on the Nikon 1 V1 will make its way into new DSLR cameras that will be announced in 2012.

26) Where to buy and availability

B&H is currently selling the Nikon 1 V1 + 10-30mm kit for $896.95.

27) More image samples

Click here to download the full-size version of the above image.

Click here to download the full-size version of the above image.

Click here to download the full-size version of the above image.

Click here to download the full-size version of the above image.

Click here to download the full-size version of the above image.