With Micro Four Thirds cameras already into their second or third generations, Nikon is so late to the ‘mirrorless’ party its rivals are already tucking into their ‘morning after’ fry-up.
But after much deliberating the ‘Big N’ has finally entered the fray with its Nikon 1 series. Led by captain V1 (left, £830 with 10-30mm lens) and lieutenant J (right, £550 with 10-30mm lens), the series debuts a new lens mount and claims to be the ‘world’s fastest and most intelligent camera system’.
Nippy autofocus
Of course, neither the GF1 or P7000 come in a rainbow of colours (see above), or have some of the Nikon 1 series’ interesting shooting modes. Rather than offer shortcuts to well-trodden effects like ‘background defocus’ or ‘tilt shift’, Nikon has created a new one called ‘motion snapshot’.
Seemingly a way to show off the series’ new Exspeed 3 sensor, this simultaneously records a short, slo-mo .MOV movie file and takes a still JPEG to create a ‘living picture’. No, we’re still not entirely sure what that means either, but Nikon is apparently working on easy ways of exporting these to social networks.