Friday, September 23, 2011

Thoughts on Nikon 1

So Nikon announced the V1 / J1 mirrorless cameras yesterday - the internet is all atwitter with how these cameras are doomed to failure (small sensor! no fast prime lenses! huge DOF! small sensor!). It's funny how the Ricoh GRD/Canon S90/Panasonic Lumix cameras don't seem to merit those same complaints, even though they have smaller sensors and no interchangeable lenses.
Since street photography is what I'm trying to focus on lately, I naturally thought about the V1 (with viewfinder, the J1 is not even worth considering in my opinion) as a platform for street shooting.  So if I were building an ideal (real-world) street kit, what would I choose?
  1. Customization - The Ricoh GRD III is an almost perfect example of a camera being customizable.  Almost every button could be re-mapped and you could store all settings into custom memory banks.  Perfect - the jury is still out on the new Nikon so I won't say anything more here.
  2. Hyperfocal setting - an ideal street camera would be very easy to enable/disable hyperfocal shooting.  Again, the Ricoh was nearly perfect for this - Snap Focus was a breeze to setup, you could configure the hyperfocal distance, and it's small sensor naturally gave plenty of DOF to work with.  So the sensor size on the Nikon 1 isn't necessarily a bad thing here.  Pair the 1 with the 10mm f/2.8 (27mm FX equivalent) and you've got a recipe for lots of DOF.  The final test will come with the Nikon software and menu systems and whether they make this easy to setup and use.
  3. Size & weight - for me, this seems to be one of the absolutely essential aspects of street photography.  You simply must pair your gear down to the absolute minimum.  the Nikon 1 is the smallest interchangeable lens camera with integrated EVF. I suspect that you'll eventually be able to take 2-3 small primes and probably carry less weight than if you were packing a rangefinder with lenses.  (And my dream kit with a 2.7x crop factor? How about an 7mm [~19mm], 13mm [35mm], and 35mm [~90mm]?  Sounds delicious.
  4. Oh and what about the F-adapter? The 90mm equivalent described about would be filled in perfectly by the already released 35mm f/1.8 G - a spectacular lens in its own right.  The 50/1.8G would be about 130mm, an ideal portrait length.  The mind starts to shudder.
  5. Fast Autofocus - along with hyperfocal settings, fast AF is a must.  From what I've read, on paper the Nikon 1 just blows away the competition - 135 single points, 41 area with phase and contrast detect modes.  This should be comparable to most DSLRs.
So personally, I think that the Nikon should be a beast for street photography provided that a true wide angle lens is released very soon. 

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