For some time now I have envied shooters around me with pocket size compact cameras, especially when some officious ‘jobs worth” security person or official has ignored everyone else and told me to stop photographing, or be chucked out. There have been many other occasions too when a little “spy” camera would have been quite useful. Don’t get me wrong I love my DSLR’s and professional lenses and cannot imagine ever parting with them. The Nikon V1 is for the times when nothing else will do the job and portability is a big issue.
I should just mention the viewfinder. The cheaper and less specced J1 does not have one, just the screen on the back. Great for reviewing your shots in a darkish space but pretty useless for much else – in my most humble opinion! The problem with the screen for composition and focusing is that it’s lousy on bright days, you have to hold the camera out in front of you – like a beacon to the security men especially on darker days when it’s lighting up your face - and it’s not that easy to keep it steady held that way. The viewfinder is great, more discreet, steadier and full size view. Afterwards and you can review your shots through the viewfinder to check shooting information, the histogram and more and zoom in throughout the image. When you put the camera to your eye the the screen blackens immediately, unless you have chosen to keep it turned off – which saves battery life big time.
So don’t buy the J1, you will spend the rest of your life regretting it and being envious of everyone with the V1 – but note you will need a bit more cash to buy a designated flash because the VI doesn’t have one whilst the J1 does. See, they’ve got you all ways.
My writing about the V1 will be my practical assessment and experience of using it and the resulting images – namely, how it works, what’s wrong with it and how to get the best from it. If you are looking for an all “whistles and bells” analysis with sexy graphs and the like you wont find it here.
Having bought it, my first impressions were not all positive. I like to be able to react quickly and make very rapid adjustments to focus, aperture and exposure compensation, a breeze with the DSLRs. With my big fingers and the button locations it was very frustrating and I lost more shots than I captured. I am still missing a few but it’s getting better.
There are two great features that I really like. Alongside the shutter is a second button so at any time I can swop over to movie mode simply by pressing it, without having to make any other adjustments to the settings. Likewise when in movie mode I can press the shutter and take a still photo without interrupting the movie. Clever thinking Nikon!
I am not the kind of guy who painstakingly keeps his cameras in a case with the lens hood on, as my repair bills with Nikon will bear witness. As the VI is pocket size thats where I want it to be, most of the time. Thats OK but, when I wanted to use it quickly I often found the shooting mode dial, that protrudes outside the width of the camera body had rotated onto movie mode or some other setting I have yet to learn about. A small piece of matt black adhesive tape has solved that problem.
To be ready for most opportunities I have set up the camera as follows;
- Exposure Mode: Aperture Priority
- Image Quality: Raw – more about this later.
- Shutter Type: Electronic – Silent
- Metering: Matrix
- White Balance: Auto
- ISO: A800 – Camera decides between ISO 100 to 800 (100-3200 also available). With time I prefer to set the ISO myself and as low as possible.
- Picture Control: Neutral
- Colour Space: Adobe 1998 – same as Photoshop and Monitor settings
- Active D Lighting: Off – can be activated post capture
- AF Area: Single Point
When shooting I like to be able to focus on my subject and then re-compose the scene, keeping my subject in focus. I achieve this by programming the AE-L, AF-L button to lock focus and exposure. It works like this:
- Focus on subject by pressing shutter half way.
- Press and hold AF-L button to fix exposure and focus.
- Re-compose the scene.
- Press shutter to capture the image.
The final adjustment is Exposure Compensation, activated by the + – button on the right of the command dial. I use this when I know the camera will be unable to correctly analyse the scene and that either blown highlights or blocked shadows will occur. Simply press the button and up pops a scale. Rotate up for increasing the exposure or down to decrease. If I know I will be shooting shortly – and where, I normally set this adjustment in advance. On a brightish day or when there is a lot of white or reflections I will set at -.7 to -1. I almost always take a couple of shots before the event to check and then adjust if necessary. Do remember that excessive underexposing will lead to inferior images when you adjust post capture.
So that’s it. All set up and ready to go.
Lots has already been written about the small sensor the consequences of which are that 10mm lens will perform like one of 28mm and the maximum print size, without stretching the pixels, will be 3870 x 2592. So at 300 pixels to the inch the maximum size print is 12.9 inches x 8.64 inches (33×22 cm), and as we see the aspect ratio is 3 to 2. So I was a little worried about what to expect out of the printer. Yesterday I printed a few images at the maximum size of 33×22 cm . These were shot in raw, converted to tiffs in Nikons ViewNX 2 Raw Converter, a little sharpening and colour adjustment in Photoshop and printed on an Epson 3880. I was pleasantly surprised by the result, the colour and detail were excellent and better than I expected. However, as a photo club member who exhibits and participates in print competitions 33×22 is just not big enough!
For some time now I have been using a Photoshop plugin from OnOne Software called Genuine Fractals. This magical software, recently renamed Perfect Resize, is used to increase the size of an image without losing quality. It apparently replicates pixels and rebuilds the image to the desired size. So I increased the size to fill an A3 sheet (39 cm wide) – the result was amazing. I could see no artefacts, grain or distortion anywhere. The bokeh (out of focus areas) were good and the image was sharp and bright and of exhibition and club competition quality. In future, if I need to extract a part of an image for printing I will first increase the size with Perfect Resize, so that the extract will still be at 300 pixel to the inch or thereabouts. If you shoot with a mobile phone Perfect Resize is for you too. You can watch a movie about it and get a free trial here.
One really major disappointment was when I tried to convert the Raw files in my Adobe Raw Converter (ARC). They files were not recognised. Instead I was forced to use Nikon’s ViewNX 2 software that came in the box. It’s OK, but very lightweight compared to ARC and doesn’t feature in my normal workflow. I guess it needs the photo press to start taking the V1 seriously before Adobe will do the same.
10mm lens, camera held within biting distance! Auto ISO 100-800 at f3.5
Unlike most cameras the V1 (and not the J1) has an infra red receiver both on the front and the back of the camera. With the ML-L3 remote (about£10 from Amazon) I can control the camera from about 20 yards away from both in front and behind. I am sure this will prove very useful, I just hope I don’t get caught!
So after mixed first impressions I am feeling more positive and looking forward to using this little silent spy in my pocket more and more. It will never replace my Nikon D700 and D300 and Pro Lenses, I never expected it to, but I will be getting shots that were previously not possible. In the coming weeks I will write more about my V1 and might even do a movie or two! So come back and check me out when I hope to demonstrate that Size Does Matter – when it’s small!
You can get the full monty Nikon V1 interactive brochure here.
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