Nikon V1 mini review + SB-N7, 10/2.8, 18.5/1.8, 10-30/3.5-5.6 and Richard Franiec custom grip

Quick Summary (for those with little time):

 

Thanks to fast AF and excellent out-of-camera colour the V1 will allow you to take some nice vacation and family photos without needing to spend 2 hours reading user manual. LCD is great and EVF is nice enough (irreplaceable in bright light). Great battery time too. Keep the ISO low and you will get some very detailed photos that will give you some great prints. I would strongly suggest reading the review from Steve Huff to get better impression what these camera can deliver. In my opinion the V1 gives the user a very good balance of simplicity & performance & price (as of late 2013) as well as IQ & size & weight.

 

Versus larger formats:

One does not have to be a rocket scientist to realise that smaller sensor is not going to deliver the same technical image quality as a larger one - in particular in term of colour depth, noise and

 

Now onto the full review:

 

Nikon V1 is no news since a while. When it entered the market more than 2 years ago it was seen as an overpriced and under performing camera that nobody should buy. At least to those that have never used one. I myself found next to no interest in the system at the time either. Only once the already mentioned review from Steve Huff was published I started to take the V1 more seriously. And yes - the camera body for around 700€ was overpriced at the time.

 

With time (and once V2 was introduced) the price of the V1 sank considerably and also positive reports started started to pop. I myself needed some small, fast and easy to use digital camera and after looking into options I made a sensible choice and went with the V1. I have actually surprised myself too as the camera I was considering was Olympus OMD E-M1 - at the time announced, but not on the market. There is no questions that E-M1 is in many (most?) ways a better camera, but it should be for about 4x the price.

 

I have used the camera since few months now with the 10 and 18.5 lenses - and recently also with the 30-110 and the SB-N7 flash and those are the items that I would like to mention briefly here.

 

So - what is the V1 and what it is not. First of all - the sensor. 1" sensor is already known from Sony in their great RX100 (though with 20 Mpix). Performance wise (dynamic range, noise) is is below current m43 like OM-D or E-P5, but that should be no surprise. It still delivers solid performance, and, what I consider very important, V1 allows you to turn off the noise reduction and so your ISO 1600 photos will be still very detailed (albeit a bit grainy).

 

On the megapixel count. It is 'only' 10 and that is GOOD. Cramping more on sensor this small would be of little advantage. Thanks to very sharp lenses these 10 Mpix have great detail and should give great A3 prints at low ISO (I am yet to print some photos from my V1)

 

The camera itself - I would describe it as professional point&shot. The main reason is the lack of controls and also the relatively low level of customisation (menus). The only control wheel (on top of the 4-way standard one) there is the scene selector which is unfortunately very easy to turn, so one quickly learns to check its position before bringing the camera to you eye. Another reason to call the V1 a pro P&S is, that it works best in the 'P' mode. But more on that later.

 

Last but not least - the EVF. The EVF is not WYSIWYG - it adjusts automatically and the output (image you take) may look differently than what you saw in the EVF when you pushed the button. This is however a big issue if you plan on using 3rd party lenses via adapter. I have briefly had one to mount Minolta AF lenses. The camera offers only manual mode and because of the way the EVF behaves - you have no idea whether you will overexpose or underexpose - photo looks always the same in the EVF - irrespective of the aperture and shutter setting. I assume it is different with the Nikon F lenses as the adapter is more clever.

 

Resolution wise and contrast wise the EVF is behind current offerings, but it is perfectly usable and takes very little space on the camera. I find myself using it about 50% of the time. Contrary to the EVF the LCD is sharp, detailed and very fluid. There is nearly no lag.

 

When it comes to construction the camera is very robust (and feels 'dense' in your hand). The surface finish is very nice, but still given the shape of the camera it is not particularly nice to hold. I got the stick-on grip from Richard Franiec and it improves the handling considerably. Only downside is that it could have been less slippery.

 

In P mode the camera will not hesitate to select the widest aperture to keep the shutter speed reasonable (close to 1/f) and to keep the ISO as low as possible. However for some reason - once you enter the 'A' mode (aperture priority) the camera will push the ISO even mode down what often results in shutter speeds too low to handhold. This was a known 'feature' (bug, actually) already when I was buying the camera, but it affects me very little, since the camera does so well in P (and I use it as pro P&S anyway).

 

JPG versus NEF:

There is no bad news here. Jpegs are nicely detailed - in particular if you turn off noise reductio. Since the automatic white balance is really robust, you just point and shoot - I find that rarely I need to use the exposure compensation. When wring with the NEF files I can only say that I am not very impressed with what included Nikon software - View NX has to offer. Since I have recently got Lightroom 5 I gave it a try. You get even a bit more detail and if needed you can recover some highlights - I think that there is about a stop or so (no scientific assessment) which sometimes held. Indeed - large sensor camera would offer you more headroom, but there is still something you can do. But the message here is - the JPGs are so good that you will rarely need to mess around with NEF files what takes time and some decent software.

 

Since the above paragraphs do not sound all too great - what are actually the strong points of the V1? That is easy:

The strong points:

- Fast AF

- Very good video quality (get stabilised lenses for that)

- Excellent color - and I mean EXCELLENT - also with fill-in flash

- Size. If you really need not only compact camera, but also the lenses - the V1 will get you there. The camera with 10 and 18.5 lenses will fit any day bag you have. The 30-110 is really small too if you need a longer lens. The flash is tiny.

- Very good price-to-performance. The V1 with 10 and 18.5 lenses costs around 500€ in Germany - that is a great deal in my opinion.

 

And now for the weak points:

- Lack of manual controls - very little can be done without entering the menu.

- Lack of distortion correction (for JPEGs) - this should really be there. Both 10 and 18.5 have visible barrel distortion and it just costs too much time to remove it with 3rd party software - even if not necessary for every shot.

- The aforementioned behaviour of the A mode.

- Nikon View NX software is nothing to write home about. I am about to start using Lightroom 5 and will try to compare the RAW conversion of both softwares.

 

Now a few words about some of the lenses and accessories.

 

10/2.8

- sharp from wide open

- very compact - fits the body very well

- mild barrel distortion

 

18.5/1.8

- very sharp from wide open

- not as compact as the 10mm, but still small and very lightweight

- surprising amount of barrel distortion. I guess Nikon was trying to save on more complicated design.

- very little CA (this is good :) )

 

30-110/3.5-5.6 - yes - it is a slow lens, but ..

- it is excellent from wide open

- it is very small

- the stabilisation works very well - I had no problem to get a perfectly sharp photo at 1/60 seconds at the full extension (equivalent of 300 mm on full frame).

- comes with lens hood that can be attached in reversed position to save space and the lens cap does not need to be removed when the hood is being mounted or unmounted. This is a little details that counts.

 

SB-N7 flash

This is a little great guy. A bit smaller than a pack of cigarets, operates with 2xAAA. The head swivels from 0deg (pointing towards the subject) to 120deg what allows to bounce the flash off the ceiling even if you point the camera down (photographing a child or a pet on a floor). It allows you to make some really nice portraits or interior low-light shots. There are several different flash setting on the V1 - even a second curtain synchronisation for some creative effects. The flash locks into the hot shoe so you do not need to worry about loosing it.

 

There are of course other lenses available - in particular the wide angle zoom 6.7-13 and the portrait tele 32/1.2 seem to be great lenses. But there are still white spaces in the lens lineup - in particular a dedicated macro lens - something like 42/2.8 is missing (and I think that V1 would make a great macro camera).

 

Hope this short write-up will help some of you.

 

If you have any questions about the V1 just ask :)

 

Regards, Matus

Done