Nikon 1 cameras

To Paul, Peter and all, I’m happy to hear you have discovered the Nikon V1 V2 etc. and I agree with virtually all you had to say. I have been using this small system for a year or so and here is my two bob’s worth. With the beaut little 70-300 zoom at max FL the “equivalent” focal length is 810 mm. At that length, despite the excellent VR, handholding is not a good idea. It’s hard enough to even find an active subject in the viewfinder let alone accurately focus on it. You will almost certainly get a small amount of camera shake. VR (vibration Reduction) is all very well but in my experience, subject movement is the main cause of blur (or unsharpness). To this end, I keep the shutter set at 1/2000th sec or higher and where necessary, increase the ISO. I would rather have a slightly noisy picture than a blurred one. For action photographs, the high speed electronic (=silent) shutter at up to 60 fps has to be one of the big plusses of the V2/V3 CAMERAS. The other point about these cameras is that for good quality you really need to get pixels on subject. By filling the frame (not my style by the way) you don’t need to enlarge the picture as much and noise is then less evident. At 810 mm, its not too difficult to fill the frame – much of the time I have to back off a bit. Cropping the images is what shows up the noise. I still prefer my SLR’s for serious photography, but the V2 is a great little camera to leave on the seat of the car, or if you have a great big Russian overcoat, it might just go in the pocket! There is another way now to achieve very long focal length ( 900 mm) in a compact unit, but of much better quality. The new light Nikkor 300 mm AFS F/4 PF VR lens with the latest 2x converter (= 600 mm) on a D7100 camera achieves a 900 mm focal length (at F/8). I have yet to receive my copy of this lens but by all accounts it is brilliant. Because the D7100 has such a good sensor, it is possible to significantly crop your images thereby effectively increasing the focal length even further, or also create a picture (rather than just a photo) . Cheers Graeme