Thinking of buying a Nikon 1 J1

[Mightycamels]

Hi,

I am a noob,

Having only ever taken photo's with my phone or a crappy point and shoot I have decided that I am at that time in my life where I should invest in a decent camera. I am getting married in Sept and wanted a decent camera for the honeymoon (no, not for that).

We were originally going to get a DSLR but after reading reviews we decided that we wanted something not quite a complex.

After looking around at reviews and whatnot I came across the Nikon J1. Does anyone have any good or bad points about it. The idea being that if we enjoy using it and understand more about photography it would be a good gateway to more sophisticated cameras.

Let me know your thoughts??

Adam.

 

[Columbo]

The J1 sounds perfect for you to be honest.
Its portable, built well, gives excellent image quality and is a doddle to use.

I'd certianly take a J1 over any of the high end compacts or bridge cameras with a 1000x zoom.

 

[a1ex2001]

If your considering the nikon, I'd also take a look and the mirrorless cameras from panasnic and olympus they are generally slightly bigger but have a larger sensor and a more mature system of lenses.

I'd also seriously consider one of the latest high end compacts the Canon S100 is brilliant if you want something properly pocket sized and the Olympux XA-1 is great if you want something a little bigger without the hassle and complexity of swapping lenses.

 

[DanF]

From what I've read it's a very easy camera to just point and shoot with, the image quality is really good considering the size of the image sensor. It'll be just as good a quite a few of the micro 4/3 cameras. Since the sensor is small you'll struggle to be able to take photos where you blur the background out (shallow depth of field) but otherwise it's a really capable camera.

There's only a couple of lenses out that you'd probably want to look at buying, the zoom and the 10mm fixed length so might be able to get it all in a kit deal.

I like this guys review on it's bigger brother the V1 (uses the same sensor so the image quality is identical) V1 review

It's probably the best at this price range, as you go up in budget you can get alternatives that allow you to do other things but for a beginner it's probably not really important.

Oh the only negative I can think of is I don't think the rear screen tilts which is pretty annoying, I use a similar style of camera and shoot from the hip all the time with it. You flip the screen so it points up then hold it lower down to take photos, it's a nice way of working with cameras.

 

[Alpherah]

The good thing about the 1 series is that its an unbelievably cheap route to getting insane telephoto reach.
Planning on buying one with the AF-S adapter to use with my 300 F/4 for wildlife

-edit-

Still/slow moving wildlife .. it disables constant AF, so no birds.

 

[Mightycamels]

Thanks, I will have a look at some of the other cameras suggested but the more I read about the J1 the more it seems to camera for me.

I had a look at that review and reading it I think to J1 over the V1 is for me.

Cheers for the help, I will get around to putting some photos up on here if they are of worth.

 

[Skynet-T800]

You can still blur the backgrounds with the J1 very well and better than I thought tbh but you do need to get close to subject.

I love the camera, the battery is great and autofocus is rapid and faster than the four-thirds cameras and is generally good at getting what you want it will track your face all day long and shoots raw!