Introduction

Ease of Use

The Nikon 1 J3 is mostly made out of aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts and is therefore heavier than you would think based on its size alone, weighing in at 201g for the body only (36g lighter than its predecessor, the J2). It also feels better made than the official product shots would have you believe. With an essentially grip-less design, the Nikon J3 is very much a two-handed affair that requires you to hold the camera's weight in the left hand, clutching the lens, and use your right hand for balance and operating the controls. This is actually a good thing as it forces you to pay attention to holding the camera properly, which in turn goes a long way towards avoiding shake-induced blur in your photos.

The camera's has an even cleaner, more minimalist front plate than the J2, dominated by the Nikon 1 lens mount. Instead of being a scaled-down version of the good old F mount, it's a completely new design that provides 100% electronic communication between the attached lens and the camera body, courtesy of a dozen contacts. Just like on the manufacturer's F-mount SLR cameras, there is a white dot for easy lens alignment, although it has moved from the 2 o'clock position (when viewed front on) to the top of the mount. The lenses themselves feature a short silver ridge on the lens barrel, which needs to be in alignment with said dot in order for you to be able to attach the lens to the camera. While this may require a bit of getting used to, it actually makes changing lenses quicker and easier.

With no lens attached, you can see the sensor sitting right behind the plane of the bayonet mount. The sensor is the same 14 megapixel images as used by the flagship J3 model. Measuring 13.2x8.8mm this "CX" format imaging chip has double the surface area of the biggest imagers used in compact and bridge cameras like the Fujifilm X20 and S100FS, but only about half the area of a standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip has a 1.36x longer diagonal than the Nikon CX imager. Given that Four Thirds has a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX "crop factor" works out to about 2.72, meaning that a 10mm lens has approximately the same angle of view as a 27.2mm lens on an FX or 35mm film camera. The Nikon 1 Nikkor 10-30mm standard zoom is thus equivalent to a 27.2-81.6mm (or, practically speaking, 28-80mm) FX lens in terms of its angle-of-view range.

The rest of the Nikon J3's faceplate is almost empty, featuring only the lens release button and an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There's no grip at all on the smooth front of the Nikon 1 J3.

Front	Rear

There are two ways of powering on the Nikon 1 J3. You can either use the on/off button sitting next to the shutter release or, if you have a collapsible-barrel zoom lens attached, you can simply press the unlocking button on the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an act that causes the camera to switch on automatically. This is an ingenious solution as you need to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes just over a second - nothing to write home about but still decent and entirely adequate.

You can frame your shots using the rear screen - there's no electronic viewfinder as on the J3 model, a key difference between the two. The LCD screen is a three-inch, 921,000-dot display (the same screen that the J2 used) that boasts wide viewing angles, great definition and accurate colours and improved visibility in strong daylight. We missed an EVF when using the J3, as holding the camera up to eye-level helps to stabilise the lens and avoid camera shake.

The control layout is rather peculiar. The Nikon 1 J3 has a small, top-mounted mode dial that lacks most of the shooting modes that are usually found on similar dials - most notably P, A, S and M - even though it has enough room to accommodate them. These modes are available on the J3 but you have to dive into the rather long-winded and not entirely logical menu to find them. The J3's mode dial now has five settings, Motion Snapshot, Best Moment Capture, green Auto Photo for beginners, the Creative mode, and Video.

The four-way controller on the rear also has four functions mapped onto its Up, Right, Down and Left buttons; including the "F" function, exposure compensation, flash mode and self-timer, respectively. Although this isn't a bad choice of functions, the fact that there is no ISO button will doubtlessly cause a lot of photographers interested in buying the Nikon J3 to be unhappy.

Front	Side

Sadly the "F" button isn't a programmable function button, but it does change operation depending upon which shooting mode you're using. In the Creative mode, it allows you to quickly choose between the various shooting modes, while in Video mode it lets you toggle between regular and slow-motion recording.

The J3 has a a scroll wheel around the four-way pad which is used to set the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (once you've found them in the menu, that is). Last but not least, there are three small buttons around the navigation pad, flush against the rear panel of the camera, including Playback, Menu and Delete.

The Auto Photo mode, marked with a green camera icon, is for beginners, with a much reduced set of options on offer (image quality, image size and continuous). The Nikon J3's Scene Auto Selector is a smart auto mode in which the camera analyses the scene in front of its lens and picks what it thinks is the right mode for that particular scene. The Creative Mode is where you will want to be most of the time. With the mode dial set to this position, you can pick your desired exposure mode from the menu. You can also choose one of the conventional PASM modes, which give you full menu access and the ability to manually set the aperture, shutter speed, or both (Program AE Shift is available in P mode). ISO and white balance can also be manually selected, but only from the menu, as already mentioned.

Of course there's AWB and auto ISO as well, with the latter coming in three flavours (Auto 160-800, 160-3200 or 160-6400) allowing you to specify how high you want the camera to go when the light gets low. You can also choose from three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, in which the camera takes control of what it focuses on (this isn't a great mode to have as your default as the camera obviously can't read your mind and may focus on something else than your actual subject); Single Point, in which you can pick one of 135 AF points by first hitting OK and then moving the active AF point around the frame using the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, in which you pick your subject, press OK and allow the camera to track that subject as it moves around, as long as it doesn't leave the frame of course.

Pop-up Flash	Top

The Nikon 1 J3 has an intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that combines contrast- and phase-difference detection in a similar fashion as the Fujifilm F300EXR did. This allows the Nikon 1 J3 to focus extremely quickly in good light, even on a moving subject. The company claims the Nikon 1 system cameras are the fastest-focusing machines in the world, and this matches our experience - as long as there's enough light. When light levels drop, the camera switches to contrast-detect AF which, though faster than on most cameras, isn't nearly as fast as the other method. It's always the camera that decides which AF method to use - the user has no influence on this.

Generally speaking, the J3 will usually only resort to contrast detection when light levels are low. In good light, we were able to take sharp photos of fast-moving subjects. The Nikon J3 certainly does not disappoint here. Manual focusing is also possible, although the Nikon 1 lenses do not have focus rings. If you want to focus manually, you first have to hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK and then use the scroll wheel to adjust focus. To assist you with this, the Nikon J3 magnifies the central part of the image and displays a rudimentary focus scale along the right side of the frame - but those are the only focusing aids you get. There's no peaking function available as on some rival models.

The J3 has an electronic shutter (the J3 also has a mechanical shutter). It's completely silent (the focus confirmation beep can be disabled from the menu) and allows the use of shutter speeds as fast as 1/16,000th of a second and, with the Electronic Hi setting selected, lets you shoot full-resolution stills at 60 frames per second. Note however that while this is a major achievement, it's limited by a buffer that can only hold 20 raw files. Additionally, the use of this mode precludes AF tracking - you have to lower the frame rate to 10fps if you want that -, and the viewfinder goes blank while the pictures are being taken. About the only application we can think of where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really come in handy is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. At this rate, a series of 5 bracketed shots could be taken in less than 0.1 second, rendering small movements that can otherwise pose alignment problems - like leaves being blown in the wind - a non-issue. Alas, the Nikon J3 does not offer such a feature - in fact it does not offer autoexposure bracketing at all.

The Nikon 1 J3 can be set to shoot Full HD video footage, and you even get to choose from 1080p at 30fps or 1080i at 60fps, depending on whether you prefer to work with progressive or interlaced video. If you don't need Full HD, there's also 720p at 60fps, which is really smooth and still counts as high definition. Secondly, you get full manual control over exposure in video mode. This is an option; you don't have to shoot in M mode but you can if that's what you need. Thirdly, you get fast, continuous AF in video mode, and it works well, especially in good light. Movies are compressed using the H.264 codec and stored as MOV files. There are separate shutter release buttons for stills and video, and thanks to this - as well as the massive processing power of the Nikon J3 - you can take multiple full-resolution stills even while recording HD video. This works in the other way round too - you can capture a movie clip even when the mode dial is in the Still Image position, simply by pressing the red movie shutter release. We found that in this case the camera will invariably record the video at 720p/60fps.

Memory Card Slot	Battery Compartment

In addition to being capable of shooting regular movies in HD quality, the Nikon 1 J3 can also shoot video at 400fps for slow-motion playback. The resolution is lower and the aspect ratio is an ultra-widescreen 2.67:1, but the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo and the like. These videos are played back at 30fps, which is more than 13x slower than the capture speed of 400fps, allowing you to get creative and show the world an array of interesting phenomena that happen too quickly to observe in real time. The Nikon J3 goes even further by offering a 1200fps video mode, but the resolution and overall quality is too poor for that to be genuinely useful.

There are two Best Moment Capture modes, with the F button toggling between them. Smart Photo Selector allows the camera to capture no less than 20 photos at a single press of the shutter release, including some that were taken before fully depressing the button. The J3 analyses the individual pictures in the series and discards 15 of them, keeping only the five that it thinks are best in terms of sharpness and composition. This feature can be genuinely useful when photographing fast action and fleeting moments. The Slow View mode captures up to 40 full-resolution continuous shots and displays them in slow motion on the LCD screen, making it easier for you to select the exact moment that you want to keep from the burst sequence.

In the innovative Motion Snapshot mode the J3 records a brief high-definition movie - whose buffering starts at a half-press of the shutter release, so again includes events that had happened before the button was fully depressed - and also takes a still photograph. The movie and the still image are now saved in a single MOV file, making them much easier to share than on the J2.

The Nikon J3 stores photos and videos on SD/SDHC/SDXC memory cards, and supports the fastest UHS-I speed class. The camera runs on a smaller EN-EL20 battery to its V2 big brother, and is consequently capable of producing considerably less shots on a single charge, managing around 230, although it does help to make the camera body more compact. The camera's tripod socket is made of metal and is positioned in line with the lens' optical axis. This also means that changing batteries or cards is not possible while the J3 is mounted on a tripod, as the hinges of the battery/card compartment door are too close to the tripod mount.

Image Quality

All of the sample images in this review were taken using the 14 megapixel Fine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 7Mb.

During the review, the Nikon 1 J3 captured images of very high quality, especially if you consider the size of its sensor. Noise is kept to a minimum, and only becomes disturbing at ISO 3200 in very low light. Colours are perhaps somewhat muted for a consumer camera but you can easily add a little punch by switching to the Vivid picture control. The Nikon 1 Nikkor 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 VR lens performed admirably with good sharpness throughout the frame and negligible purple fringing. The close-up performance of the 10-30mm lens is surprisingly good. The night shot came out well even with long-exposure noise reduction switched off, and the Vibration Reduction feature of the lens worked very well.

Noise

The base sensitivity of the Nikon 1 J3 is ISO 100 and the highest setting is ISO 6400. The 100% crops below show what the quality is like at each setting for JPEG and RAW formats.

JPEG	RAW
ISO 160 (100% Crop)	ISO 160 (100% Crop)
ISO 200 (100% Crop)	ISO 200 (100% Crop)
ISO 400 (100% Crop)	ISO 400 (100% Crop)
ISO 800 (100% Crop)	ISO 800 (100% Crop)
ISO 1600 (100% Crop)	ISO 1600 (100% Crop)
ISO 3200 (100% Crop)	ISO 3200 (100% Crop)
ISO 6400 (100% Crop)	ISO 6400 (100% Crop)

Sharpening

The out-of-camera JPEGs are quite sharp but still benefit from a little sharpening in a program like Adobe Photoshop.

Original (100% Crop)	Sharpened (100% Crop)

File Quality

The JPEG quality settings available on the Nikon J3 include Basic, Normal and Fine. The camera can also save photos in Nikon’s proprietary raw file format, NEF.

Fine (5.68Mb) (100% Crop)	Normal (2.87Mb) (100% Crop)
Basic (1.43Mb) (100% Crop)	RAW (1.43Mb) (100% Crop)

Chromatic Aberrations

The Nikon 1 Nikkor 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens does not suffer from strong chromatic aberrations - the example below shows the worst-case scenario you are likely to encounter in real-world images.

Chromatic Aberrations 1 (100% Crop)

Macro

There is currently no macro lens available for the Nikon 1 system, but the Nikon 1 Nikkor 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 lens offers a very good close-up performance for a kit zoom. The following example demonstrates how close you can get to the subject, in this case a CompactFlash memory card. We have also included a 100% crop to show you what the quality is like.

Macro Shot	100% Crop

Flash

The flash settings on the Nikon 1 J3 are Auto, Auto with Red-eye reduction, Slow Sync, Slow Sync with red-eye reduction, Rear-curtain Sync and Flash Off. These shots of a white coloured wall were taken at a distance of 1.5m. Some vignetting and barrel distortion is apparent at the 27mm wide-angle setting.

Flash Off - Wide Angle (27mm)	Flash On - Wide Angle (27mm)
Flash Off - Telephoto (81mm)	Flash On - Telephoto (81mm)

And here are a couple of portrait shots. As you can see, neither the Auto or the Auto with red-eye reduction options caused any amount of red-eye.

Flash On	Flash On (100% Crop)
Red Eye Reduction	Red Eye Reduction (100% Crop)

Night

The Nikon J3 has a minimum shutter speed of 30 seconds, with a Bulb setting also available for really long exposures. The shot below was captured at a shutter speed of 20 seconds at ISO 160.

Night	Night (100% Crop)

Vibration Reduction

The Nikon 1 J3 does not offer body-integral image stabilisation, but the kit lens bundled with the camera features Vibration Reduction, Nikon’s proprietary lens-based optical stabilisation system. This allows you to take sharp hand-held photos at slower shutter speeds than with lenses that lack this function. You can see that this feature really works and could mean the difference between a ruined shot and a sharp capture. Note that even though VR is lens-based, you need to activate it via the camera's menu as the lenses do not feature a VR switch. The available VR modes are Normal, Active and Off.

Shutter Speed / Focal Length	Anti Shake Off (100% Crop)	Anti Shake On (100% Crop)
1/2 sec / 27mm
1/3 sec / 81mm

Active D-Lighting

Active D-lighting is Nikon’s dynamic range optimisation tool that attempts to squeeze  the full dynamic range of the sensor into JPEGs. On the Nikon 1 J3, the strength of the effect cannot be modified by the user. The only available settings are on and off.

Off	On

Picture Controls

Nikon’s Picture Controls, similarly to Canon’s Picture Styles, are preset combinations of different contrast and saturation settings. The available Picture Controls are Standard, Vivid, Neutral, Monochrome, Portrait and Landscape. The following series demonstrates the differences across these settings.

Standard	Neutral
Vivid	Monochrome
Portrait	Landscape

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Nikon 1 J3 camera, which were all taken using the 14 megapixel Fine JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.

Sample RAW Images

The Nikon 1 J3 enables users to capture RAW and JPEG format files. We've provided some Nikon RAW (NEF) samples for you to download (thumbnail images shown below are not 100% representative).

Sample Movie & Video

Product Images

Front of the Camera / Lens Removed

Isometric View

Isometric View

Front of the Camera / Lens Fitted

Front of the Camera / Pop-up Flash

Isometric View

Isometric View

Isometric View

Isometric View

Rear of the Camera

Rear of the Camera / Image Displayed

Rear of the Camera / Extend the Zoom Ring

Rear of the Camera / Turned On

Rear of the Camera / Main Menu

Rear of the Camera / Main Menu

Rear of the Camera / Best Moment Capture

Rear of the Camera / Motion Capture Theme

Top of the Camera

Bottom of the Camera

Side of the Camera

Side of the Camera

Front of the Camera

Front of the Camera

Memory Card Slot

Battery Compartment

Conclusion

In what must be one of the quickest releases in recent memory, the new J3 replaces the previous J2 model after a mere 4 months on the shelves. Featuring the same 14 megapixel sensor as the flagship V2 and a more simplified control layout than the J2, the J3 is now the middle model in the Nikon 1 lineup in terms of build quality and features. It's also had a rather significant price increase, which ultimately takes some of the shine off its overall appeal as a fast and capable step-up model for compact camera owners.

The Nikon 1 J3 offers many of the key features of its more expensive and bigger brother, the V2, in a smaller, lighter and simpler package that is even more clearly targeted at people upgrading from a compact. It also shares the same idiosyncracies, however, regarding its low-light focusing and user interface, and it suffers in direct comparison to the V2 by not having an electronic viewfinder, accessory port, mechanical shutter and longer battery life.

In good light the Nikon J3 is as fast as anything on the market when it comes to auto-focus speed. Even if you compare it to pro SLR cameras with fast-focusing lenses, the Nikon 1 J3 comes out favourably, both in terms of sheer speed and accuracy. Its headline-grabbing 60fps burst mode might not be quite as useful as it may sound, but the fact that it can also shoot at 15fps and keep the subject in focus is pretty sensational, especially if you consider that we are talking about a camera that’s a lot smaller than a typical SLR. We're also pleased to see the high image quality has been maintained despite a big jump in the megapixel count.

While the Nikon 1 J3 is a good fit for beginners, it's not so well-suited to serious amateurs. The J3 is a very small, high-quality, discreet and generally fast camera but its interface is quite clearly not geared toward users who like to take full control of the picture-taking process. Most of the features these photographers want are there, but too many of them are buried within the menu, which is bound to be a source of frustration to any power user. The V2 is a much better fit for prosumers.

Which leaves the J3 in something of an odd position - simpler and cheaper than the flagship V2, but more expensive than the new S1 entry-level model, and therefore not the first Nikon 1 model that naturally springs to mind for many would-be upgraders for whom price is a primary concern. We still like the Nikon 1 J3, but are ultimately left a little confused by the simplified control layout that appeals more to beginners, and the bigger price-tag that doesn't...

Ratings (out of 5)
Design	4
Features	4
Ease-of-use	4
Image quality	4.5
Value for money	3.5

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Reviews of the Nikon 1 J3 from around the web.

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