Nikon 1 J5 Review: Nikon presents the retreaded mirrorless 1 J5 in new design 

After the introduction of the Nikon 1 J1 in 2011, the J-Series is entering its fifth generation with the 1 J5. Nikon thought it was time for a makeover in design and operating concept for the mirrorless system camera and listened to the wishes of its customers and the (almost worn out) retro trend. So Nikon says goodbye to the simple, modern brick design and replaces it with a more classic camera design with – albeit tiny – handle. Even the classic recording programs P, A, S and M are now finally available on the program selector wheel and can be easily controlled thanks to two control wheels.

Brief assessment

Pros

• Extremely compact and well manufactured housing
• Sensor with high image resolution
• Touchscreen that can be folded through almost 270 degrees
• Two rotating wheels and enough buttons for direct operation
• Fast response times (autofocus, shutter release delay, continuous shooting speed)

Cons

• Strong edge drop in resolution and strong distortion of the set lens
• Severe loss of image detail at high ISO
• Very fiddly Micro-SD cards

With the latest model in the mirrorless camera system 1, the manufacturer Nikon not only breaks with the design of the previous models, but also changes the operating concept. Finally, the classic creative programs P, A, S and M are easily accessible and the parameters can be quickly adjusted using two thumbwheels. In addition, a back-illuminated, 20 megapixel CMOS sensor is used for the first time, which promises better image quality.

There is also a small innovation in the 1″ sensor, which measures 13.2 by 8.8 millimetres. For the first time in the 1-series (i.e. One-series), a back-illuminated CMOS sensor (BSI) is used, as already known from the Sony RX100 II and many others. It has a resolution of 20.8 megapixels and can even record 4K videos, but in the 1 J5 it only records at a jerky 15 frames per second. It only becomes liquid in Full-HD at 60 frames per second or in 720p at even 120 frames per second for slow-motion pictures. But the domain of the 1 J5 lies in the photo sector anyway, where it shines with 20 series images per second in full resolution including focus tracking. Without focus tracking, even 60 continuous frames per second are achieved. In addition, photos can be taken in full resolution in 3:2 aspect ratio without interruption during video recording.

With the 1 J5, Nikon departs from the simple, modern design and replaces it with a classic one with a leather-looking cover. [Photo: Nikon]

Nikon has also accommodated a small pop-up flash in the compact housing of the 1 J5. The Nikon 1 J5’s rear 7.5 cm touchscreen can be folded down over 80 degrees and even 180 degrees up. Selfies, over-head and close to the ground shots are effortless. [Photo: Nikon]

The 1.037 million pixel resolution monitor of the Nikon 1 J5 has a practical touch function. [Photo: Nikon]

The 7.5 centimetre touch screen of the Nikon 1 J5 can be folded up 180 degrees upwards and 86 degrees downwards for the first time. [Photo: Nikon]

A hybrid technology with 171 measuring points is still used for the autofocus. These are composed of phase and contrast autofocus points. 105 phase measurement sensors in the center of the sensor ensure that the distance to the subject is measured and movements are tracked, the contrast autofocus, this component Nikon wants to have accelerated again, does the fine work for exact focusing. In dark ambient light situations, where the phase autofocus can no longer measure, the contrast autofocus even takes over the focusing alone. If the photographer wants to determine the focus measuring field himself, however, he can choose from only 49 fields, according to Nikon, in order to control the focus points faster.

The plastic housing appears to be of high quality workmanship and is partially covered with a leather-looking coating. Only the tripod thread located on the bottom of the camera in the optical axis is made of metal. In the silver-black colour version, the design of the 1 J5 comes very close to a classic camera, which means that Nikon floats on the retro wave that has been seen on the camera market for a few years now. Classic design combined with modern technology, so to speak. The 1 J5 is also available in black or silver-white. The bright colors are thus omitted, this also applies to the 10-30mm set lens, which comes in black or silver depending on the housing color. Besides the sensor, the image processor is also new: it’s now the Expeed 5a, derived from the Expeed 5 of the large DSLRs for the 1-series. For the first time, the processor allows the use of Active D-Lighting technology in video recording, which results in better shadow detail depending on the subject situation. By the way, the 1 J5 controls the shutter purely electronically and thus enables a shortest shutter speed of 1/16,000 second.

The 1″ sensor of the Nikon 1 J5 has a resolution of 20.8 megapixels and for the first time in the 1 series is designed using the more light-sensitive BSI process. [Photo: Nikon]

A program selector wheel with P, A, S and M as well as two control wheels and a function key make the operation of the Nikon 1 J5 easy. [Photo: Nikon]

Since 2015, the Nikon 1 J5 is available, not only in silver-black, but also in pure black as in the picture. [Photo: Nikon]

 

The third color for the Nikon 1 J5 is silver-white. The set with the 1-Nikkor VR 10-30 mm PD-Zoom costs just under 540 Euros in all colors. [Photo: Nikon]

In addition to the program selector wheel with P, A, S and M and the two rotating wheels, there is also a function key “Fn”, which can be freely assigned and further simplifies camera control. For example, this allows quick access to ISO sensitivity, which operates in the range of ISO 160 to 12,800. Of course there is also an ISO automatic, which can even work in the manual exposure program. For those who prefer the automatic, the 1 J5 also features numerous programs that make shooting child’s play. The range of effect filters has even grown to 14 pieces. Also new is the screen that can now be tilted 180 degrees upwards and 86 degrees downwards. Like the 1 J4, it is a 7.5 centimeter touch screen with a resolution of 1.037 million pixels. Folding up 180 degrees makes the so popular self-portraits, also called selfies, possible. A viewfinder or a flash shoe is not to be found, but at least Nikon has installed a small pop-up flash with a guide number of 5. But it is not suitable for wireless control of Nikon’s flash system.

As already with the 1 J4, Nikon has WLAN integrated. A new feature is the NFC support, which enables a particularly simple connection setup. The app, on the other hand, is still very rudimentary and essentially allows triggering the camera including live view as well as transmitting the recorded images. Apart from the self-timer, however, not many settings can be made. In comparison to the 1 J4, the case is slightly lower and narrower, but three millimeters thicker due to the tiltable touchscreen. Furthermore, the 1 J5 weighs 40 grams more. But this isn’t due to the new EN-EL24 battery, which is 15 percent weaker in performance than the good old EN-EL22. Nikon at least includes an external battery charging tray with the 1 J5. With memory cards, on the other hand, the user has to deal with the tiny micro-SD cards. If you want, you can connect your 1 J5 to your flat screen TV thanks to the micro HDMI connector for presenting pictures and videos.

The new battery Nikon EN-EL24 has about 15 percent less capacity than the old one. [Photo: Nikon]

The external charging cradle MH-31 is included in the scope of delivery of the Nikon 1 J5. [Photo: Nikon]

Since 2015, the Nikon 1 J5 is available in black, silver-black or silver-white in a set with the 1-Nikkor VR 10-30 mm PD Zoom at a price of just under 540 Euros. The electronic power zoom covers a small frame equivalent focal length range of 27 to 81 millimetres and extends automatically when the camera is switched on. The set with the Superzoom 1-Nikkor VR 10-100 mm (27-270 mm KB) is said to cost just under 750 Euros and is only available in black.

Ergonomics and Workmanship

At just ten by six by three centimetres, the Nikon 1 J5 is extremely compact for a mirrorless system camera and is more likely to compete with compact cameras, for which it is said to be a competitor or even an entry-level model. With the set lens 10-30 mm PowerZoom, however, the camera becomes twice as thick, and now ten by six by six centimetres need to be stowed away. But with 340 grams ready to use, this combination remains pleasantly light. This is not least due to the generous use of plastic as the housing material for both the camera and the lens. Only the bayonets and the tripod thread arranged in the optical axis are made of metal.

The Nikon 1 J5 is an extremely compact system camera; it is only ten centimetres wide and six centimetres high. Together with the 10-30 mm set lens, it weighs just 340 grams. [Photo: Nikon]

The generous leather covering of the front including the handle and the thumb rest provides a touch of high quality, but overall the camera doesn’t look cheap at all. The housing parts are assembled to fit exactly together, nothing creaks or gives way. Such a compact system camera doesn’t fill a big man’s paw, but the small handle together with the leather cover makes the J5 easy to hold. The lithium-ion battery is accessible via a flap on the underside. The battery is charged externally and is sufficient for 250 shots according to CIPA standard. The memory card compartment is also located behind this flap and only takes the somewhat fiddly micro SD cards. They are available with up to 200 GByte storage capacity. If one transfers the pictures via USB or WLAN, the fiddly handling of the memory card is not needed.

Switching on and off is done with the small lever on the trigger. The upper thumbwheel is easily accessible, and the video recording button is located in its center. There are nine more buttons on the back, five of which form a four-weigher with a central confirmation button. The second wheel is arranged on the outside, which is reasonably easy to operate. If the pressure is too little, the thumb slips over the wheel, if the pressure is too much, press the key under the wheel. One should not overlook the small Fn-knob on the front next to the bayonet. This can be reached very well with the ring finger.

You have to do without a viewfinder in the Nikon 1 J5, but instead there is a 7.5 centimeter display with a fine 1.04 million pixel resolution. It is a touch screen that allows the precise focusing on a motif detail by means of fingertips. In addition, numerous other functions can be controlled directly with the finger on the screen as an alternative to using the keys. Despite the slim case, the screen is foldable in an enormous angle range. On the one hand, it can be folded down over 80 degrees for overhead shots, but on the other hand, the mechanism also allows it to be folded up 180 degrees. This allows (at 90 degrees) shots close to the ground with a comfortable view of the screen, at 180 degrees selfies succeed without problems.

The compact 10-30mm zoom covers a focal length of 27 to 81 millimetres equivalent to a small image due to the 13.2 by 8.8 millimetres small CMOS sensor (1 inch type). Zooming is purely electronic with the help of the ring on the lens. The zoom reacts extremely quickly and travels through the entire triple zoom range within half a second. With slow movements, on the other hand, the focal length can be adjusted continuously in very small steps. Unfortunately, the focal length is not shown on the screen, only a bar graph gives an idea of the magnification. Thanks to its 171 measuring points, including phase AF sensors integrated on the sensor, the autofocus works at a good 0.2 seconds, but manual focusing is less effective. The thumbwheel mentioned above, which has a bad grip, serves as a sharpening ring, while the lens ring continues to adjust the zoom and the upper thumbwheel adjusts the magnification of the magnifier. Focus-Peaking as a focusing aid is unfortunately missing.

The 10-30mm set lens (27-81mm KB) of the Nikon 1 J5 extends the tube when switched on. This makes it very compact during transport. [Photo: Nikon]

The menus are relatively clear, especially because they do not allow too many settings. The Fn button can be assigned an individual function, whereby the ISO sensitivity is probably a very useful default setting. The F button on the back of the camera displays a small quick menu on the screen for the most important shooting settings such as white balance, focus mode, and exposure metering. In contrast, we have painfully missed a button for adjusting the display overlays. Unfortunately, neither the display for a clear view of the subject can be faded out, nor is there a live histogram or spirit level. After all, grid lines can be shown or hidden permanently by menu command. However, the 4×4 division does not seem particularly helpful. Lines for the golden section would have been better. The creative programs, or scene mode programs, are much easier to access thanks to the newly designed program selector wheel. By the way, not only pure filter effects are hidden behind the creative modes, but also, for example, the panning panorama mode and the HDR function.

Equipment

The fact that the creative programs for semi-automatic or manual exposure control have now moved to the program dial does not mean that the camera is only intended for professionals. The innovative automatic transmissions and especially the sports shooting programs are still built into the 1 J5. In the fully automatic mode, the photographer does not even need to worry about any further settings, only the zoom ring and the shutter release are to be operated. Sports mode allows 10, 20, 30 or 60 continuous frames per second at full resolution, but only the first 20 shots are saved. These continuous shooting rates are also available in the creative programs. The moving snapshot, on the other hand, appears to be more of a gimmick. In addition to a photo, a short video sequence is also recorded to capture the moment in motion. In playback, the video is accompanied by a melody instead of the original sound.

The Best Moment Capture function, on the other hand, conceals useful functions that make it easier for the photographer to catch the right moment when shooting. This way, serial images are taken instead of a single image, even before the photographer presses the shutter release button. So if you press this button too late, you can select another picture as the main picture of the sequence during playback. As already mentioned, behind the creative filter setting there are not only various filter effects such as miniature, toy camera, retro, fisheye, star effect etc., but also real, useful recording programs. HDR, for example, takes several differently exposed images and combines them into a photo with drawings in normally burnt-out lights and black depths. This works surprisingly well. A real exposure bracketing function is unfortunately missing in the 1 J5. A little more sophisticated, however, is the swivel panorama function. You should neither pan too fast nor too slow and if possible not wobble up and down, because the latter causes errors when assembling.

Thanks to the electronic shutter, the Nikon 1 J5 releases absolutely silently and exposes with up to 1/16,000 second fast shutter speed. However, fast-moving subjects can be played back somewhat distorted by the rolling shutter effect. Due to the lack of a global shutter, the flash sync speed is also rather poor at 1/60 second. Especially in bright environments you’ll have problems using the small built-in flash as a brightener, especially as it’s rather weak with a guide number of 5. Unfortunately the 1 J5 does not offer an external flash connection. After all, flash can be used at the beginning or end of the exposure, with longer exposure times the flash synchronizes anyway. If you wish, you can even manually control the flash output in six output levels (1/32 to 1). By the way, there is another disadvantage of the electronic shutter for bulb long time exposures: The maximum exposure time is only two minutes.

The 10-30 mm set lens looks almost fat on the dainty 1 J5 from this perspective. This is certainly also due to the relatively small lens diameter. [Photo: Nikon]

The Nikon 1 J5 has a 1″ sensor measuring 13.2 by 8.8 millimetres, which is designed in a back-illuminated BSI CMOS construction. [Photo: Nikon]

The Nikon 1 J5 records videos in a maximum of 4K resolution. That sounds great at first, but the resolution allows a maximum of 15 frames per second, which makes the videos unsightly jerky. Full-HD video recording at up to 60 frames per second is much smoother. The J5 adjusts the focus as well as the exposure very quickly and almost inaudibly. The stereo sound is picked up by the built-in microphone, which is located to the left and right of the flash. But the Nikon also masters specialties such as slow motion and time lapse films. In slow motion, however, the resolution is only 800×533 or 400×144 pixels with an 8:3 widescreen format. The images are captured at 400 or even 1,200 frames per second. These advanced video modes are accessed via the video program on the mode dial. Thanks to the video recording button, however, video recordings are possible at any time, and small markers on the screen even show the later image section before the video recording button is pressed.

By the way, if you like to edit pictures after taking them, I am at the wrong address at Nikon. Only resizing and cropping is possible and Nikon’s own Active-D-Lighting function for shadow brightening can be applied to an image afterwards. After all, films can be shortened, but raw data images cannot be edited or converted into a JPEG. Thanks to built-in WLANs, images can be transmitted wirelessly to smartphones and tablets. If they have an NFC chip, even the connection setting is very easy. With the help of the corresponding app for Android and iOS, the camera can also be remotely triggered, including live image transmission. However, there is no remote control due to the lack of further setting options. Here Nikon lags far behind the other manufacturers.

Picture Quality

The Nikon 1 J5 had to prove its image quality with the testing software as well as in practice. The set lens 10-30 mm PD Zoom VR was used. After all, the new 20-megapixel BSI CMOS sensor promises good image quality with high resolution, as the sensor has already proven itself in numerous high-end compact cameras, such as the RX100 series from Sony.

Apart from a micro USB interface and a micro HDMI port, the Nikon 1 J5 has no other interfaces, but thanks to WLAN it can also transfer images wirelessly. [Photo: Nikon]

The Nikon 1 J5 has a small grip bead and a thumb rest. Both are covered with a non-slip rubber, so that the J5 sits well in the hand despite its small dimensions. [Photo: Nikon]

In fact, the Nikon 1 J5 achieves a very high maximum resolution with up to 67 line pairs per millimeter (lp/mm). This is measured at 50 percent contrast, where the resolution is clearly perceptible to the human eye. In addition, the information is given in 35mm equivalent, so that this information is comparable across different sensor sizes. However, this high resolution is only achieved with a medium focal length in the image center at F4.5 and F5.6. In wide angle, however, just over 60 lp/mm is also achieved in the image center, for which you have to stop down to F5.6, while the resolution is somewhat lower at open aperture. At the telescopic position, the 1 J5 also resolves 61 lp/mm, in this case with an open aperture of F5.6. In wide angle, the resolution starts at less than 30 lp/mm and only just exceeds this value when fading. Even in telescopic position, hardly more than 30 lp/mm are reached at the edge of the image. At medium focal length, the edge resolution of up to 47 lp/mm is significantly higher. Thus, depending on the focal length and aperture, up to 50 percent edge loss of resolution is to be deplored. For sharp-edged printouts in a size of 20 by 30 centimetres, the resolution is sufficient after all.

The lens also does not perform as well in terms of distortion. While it is barrel-shaped at wide angle, it is two percent or more cushion-shaped at medium and long focal length. Both are more than clearly visible. It gets a little better if one activates the distortion correction in the menu, but this leads to a slight reduction of the image angle due to the equalization including the cropping. At least the edge darkening is low and the colour fringes are also kept within limits.

The 1″ sensor has a signal-to-noise ratio of 40 dB at the lowest sensitivity of ISO 160, but already at ISO 400 this is only just above the critical limit of 35 dB. At ISO 800 this is undershot. After all, color noise doesn’t play a role, while brightness noise is minimal from ISO 800 and slightly more visible above ISO 3.200. The texture sharpness already starts to decrease at ISO 400, already at ISO 800 the images appear a little bit more detailed. They are significantly softer only from ISO 1.600. Up to ISO 200, the input dynamic reaches a very good value of over eleven f-stops, but remains at a minimum of ten f-stops up to ISO 3.200.

While the tonal value curve is very steep, typical for point-and-shoot cameras, making the images look very crisp, the J5 makes little use of the initial tonal value range. Even at the lowest sensitivity, less than 224 brightness levels are used, which is still good. However, already at ISO 400, the J5 falls into the only acceptable range of less than 160 steps. Up to ISO 3,200, it crabs at values around 128 levels, only to drop even further. While the manual white balance works very precisely and the automatic one also delivers good pictures with a natural impression of the light situation, the Nikon doesn’t take individual color values too precisely. Cyan deviates clearly into blue (for a beautiful, deep blue sky), violet tones and also red to orange tones are clearly saturated (bright colors). In the end, the J5 delivers beautiful, if not necessarily precise colors.

The tripod thread of the Nikon 1 J5 is located in the optical axis and is, apart from the bayonet, one of the less metal parts of the otherwise plastic housing. [Photo: Nikon]

The lithium-ion battery of the Nikon 1 J5, which is shrunk in comparison to the previous model, is sufficient for 250 shots according to the CIPA standard. The micro SD cards used are fiddly small. [Photo: Nikon]

Nikon 1 J5 Datasheet