The Nikon J1 has an excellent DxO Mark score of 56, and it recently received an extremely favorable review from respected professional photographer Rob Galbraith. I'm looking for a compact camera to replace my wife's Panasonic DMC-ZS3 point-and-shoot, so I figured I'd give the J1 a try at a local store. To replace my wife's ZS3, the J1 has to take better pictures than the ZS3 both indoors and out, while in fully automatic point-and-shoot mode.On my first trip to the store, I took many pictures of my kids running around in the aisles of the store. I was impressed at how fast the J1 could shoot without slowing down and how quickly it appeared to autofocus on my cavorting children. But when I got home and uploaded the pictures to my computer, I was shocked to see that the pictures were all black, underexposed by more than four stops. WTF! The exif showed that the camera had been set to shutter priority with 1/3200 shutter and I didn't notice it in the store because all the pictures looked good on image review. So clearly whatever the J1 is showing on the LCD immediately after you take a picture is NOT the picture it saved on the SD card. Yes it's partly my fault for not checking the settings but the camera shares a significant amount of blame for (incorrectly) telling me that my pictures were good. Strike one.
On my second trip to the store, I checked all the camera settings twice and put it in full auto. My kids couldn't attend, so I took pictures of things and people in the store. When I uploaded the pictures to the computer, I was pleased that the exposure was acceptable but disappointed that nearly every picture was washed out from what appeared to be flare from the overhead lights in the store (see attached images). Yes, the overhead lights were bright, but surely not bright enough to ruin all the pictures? Strike two.
On my third trip to the store, I brought along a DMC-ZS3 compact camera, an LX3 premium compact, and a GH1 micro four-thirds with the 20mm f1.7 lens. I set all cameras to full auto, except the GH1 which I set to aperture priority f4.0 to simulate the GF3/GX1 14-42mm kit zoom lens. Surely the J1 would be able to best the ZS3 and LX3 with their much smaller sensors and older technology. But that was not to be the case... Unlike the other three cameras, the J1 had difficulty focusing on any of the subjects I chose; it was easily distracted by reflections and who knows what else. The slightest hint of backlighting caused the entire J1 image to be washed out, much more so than any of the other cameras. The resulting pictures are awful, worse even than the ZS3. Take a look at noirist's "Camera Test" set on flickr.
Rob Galbraith has shown that it is possible to pull reasonable images out of the J1 outdoors at low ISOs, but my experience suggests that it is not easy to do so at higher ISOs, and certainly not in full auto. The electronic shutter of the J1 can cause severe image quality degradation at high ISOs for even mildly back-lit subjects. The very quick autofocus is only useful if you are willing to manually control the location of the autofocus point because the J1 does a poor job of choosing what to focus on in the presence of reflections and backlighting. Like the Nikon DSLRs, you must continually fiddle with all the J1 camera settings (autofocus mode, metering mode, exposure compensation, focus point, etc.) to get the best images. It's a lot of work for what? Even an old point-and-shoot superzoom can take better indoor pictures than the J1 with no effort at all, and if you're going to work that hard to get reasonable images from the J1 you might as well bring along a DSLR and get some truly outstanding images! Worst of all, the image review (which can't be turned off) is a complete lie. You can take horrible pictures with the J1 and not realize it until you get home and upload them to your computer.
Bottom line: an amateur photographer looking to upgrade from a point-and-shoot would do better with micro four thirds, like a or with . Those camera bodies and lenses are smaller than the J1, and their sensors are twice as large (and hence capture twice as much light with better subject isolation). They offer many more native lenses of all sizes, speeds, and focal lengths, and Panasonic's intelligent auto "iA" system will let a novice take take better pictures with much less work or skill than they can with the J1. A photographer willing and able to extract the best images out of the J1 will be disappointed when they realize they could have gotten much better pictures out of a Nikon 5100 or other DSLR for the same amount of work.
Review by Noirist
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