This Tiny $250 Camera Is A Pocket Rocket!

this tiny mirrorless camera has all of the Hallmarks of being an amazing Street or travel camera it's small lightweight and has some pretty powerful internal specs and best of all you can find them in abundance on auction sites like eBay priced anywhere between $200 and $300 and most of the options that I came across at that price were paired with an array of lenses and accessories too in fact I actually picked up my camera for around £200 on eBay which is around $250 and it came included with this1 18.5 mm f1.8 prime lens and and this retro leather camera bag which definitely doesn't look like my mother's purse before you say anything but the reason why this camera is just so cheap is probably the same reason why many people have never even heard of them before and that's because this range of cameras was actually scrapped after it failed in a pretty spectacular kind of way so if that's the case why do I think this J5 is still worth talking about in 2024 well this is the Nikon 1 J5 and it was part of Nikon's first ever attempt at breaking into the mirrorless camera market now collectively they were either known as the Nikon One range or sometimes referred to as Nikon CX format cameras but essentially they all started out in 2011 with two core flavors at the bottom of the totem there was this J range and as the name of this particular camera implies this was the fifth in its lineage above the J range was the vline which was designed to be a high-end class of camera with slightly better specs and in most cases a built in evf but sadly Nikon only ever went on to make three models of the V cameras before scrapping the range prematurely back in 2016 in 2013 Nikon introduced the srange which was designed as an entry-level option positioned beneath these J cameras but these were also very shortlived with nickon pulling the plug after just two iterations there was also a one-off all weather model called the aw1 but that range never made it past the first model so the J range was the only line of cameras to survive right from the start all the way to The Bitter End when in 2018 Nikon finally decided to shove these CX format cameras Al together as they changed tactics and started developing their new line of fullframe and apsc sized mirrorless cameras so with a total of 11 cameras from the Nikon One range to choose from why did I go for this J5 specifically well this camera was not only the last of the J lineage but it was also one of the last nickon one cameras to ever be developed which means that in terms of specs it was also benefiting from the best tech the range had to offer also stylistically when you compare this J5 to just about any of the other CX format cameras it really does stand out like a sore thumb but in a good way the designers did away with the point and choot compact style Aesthetics in favor of a more serious professional looking design with this two-tone metallic and faux leather finish though just to be clear this is actually not metal it's very much plastic but anyway as a result the camera doesn't even look like it belongs in this whole family of cameras now perhaps this was just a case of Nikon taking a very sharp left turn as one last ditch attempt to save this whole camera range from the impending Cliff edge up ahead who knows but but whatever the reason doing away with the familiar soap barlik design not only made this camera look better in my opinion at least but it also made it a lot nicer to handle specifically they gave it a proper hand grip and a rear thumb rest which was something seriously lacking on all of the other options although there's no evf on this camera there is at least a generously sized 3-in touchscreen on the back that can pull out and flip over 270° which is obviously ideal for shooting at high and low angles it also has a popup Flash a dedicated mode dial and two separate command dials I mean sure the second dial doubles as a d-pad and is a little bit on the fiddly side to use but the point is that all of the core features you would hope for in a camera are present in this for me though it's the j5s miniature size and feather weight that makes this such an appealing option even with this slightly larger prime lens on the front it's still more than happy living in my jacket pocket meaning that it's a completely plausible option for an everyday carry along but ultimately no camera is entirely perfect and there are certainly a few things about this design that won't make it perfect for everyone personally the biggest gripe I have with this design is this button right here now for some unknown reason someone high up in the Nikon design Department decided it was imperative that this camera should include a dedicated button for Wi-Fi transfer so that at any point you can connect this camera to your phone for transferring images now obviously that is great and super handy if you're someone who uses that feature a lot but for the rest of us there's just one small problem if you happen to press this button by mistake it completely locks up the camera for a little over 8 seconds whilst it tries to connect to the Wi-Fi and once this process has begun there is no backing out of it until it finally prompts you that you can now navigate Away by pressing the menu button now on the grand scheme of things 8 seconds doesn't sound like a long time but when you're out shooting a few seconds can be the difference between getting the shot or completely missing it and unfortunately there's no option in the settings menu on this camera that allows you to reassign this button to something more useful so you are just stuck with it as is now don't get me wrong it's not something that I press all of the time but on the few occasions that I have pressed it I have found that turning the camera off and then on again is actually a little bit quicker than just painfully waiting it out but still I really do wish this wasn't a thing I had to enure but obviously this one small gripe isn't going to be enough to cause the entire downfall of a camera system so what did go so wrong for nickon well it's almost impossible to say for certain but my hunch is that ultimately I think that these cameras were up against just way too much strong competition from the likes of Sony Fujifilm Panasonic and Olympus all of which at the time were offering cameras that featured larger micro 4/3 or apsc size sensors whereas just like myself this camera only has a 1 iner but as I told my wife the first time I met her don't be put off by the size it may look like a needle but it works like a sewing machine and the same mindset should be adopted for this J5 sensor because sometimes being smaller than average does come with a few unexpected advantages firstly it means it can offer faster readout speeds and by teaming this with an electronic shutter this camera can actually rattle off shots as fast as 60 frames per second now as impressive as all of that sounds and it certainly is impressive especially considering its age speed is only as good as long as you have the stamina to match and unfortunately that's where this camera falls down ever so slightly with such a small frame there really wasn't enough space to include a full-sized SD card slot so instead we have to settle for a Micro SD and that means at 60 frames per second no matter if you're shooting raw or jpeg it doesn't take all that long before those 20.8 Apel files cause everything to Screech to a halt but let's be honest spunking out 60 images in a second is overkill for just about every situation I can think of so I found that reducing this speed to 20 frames per second or slower is more than enough now I should mention at this point that this camera was also marketed as being able to capture 4K video footage which I thought was pretty damn impressive for a camera of this size and age but it seems you do need to be a bit of an expert at playing hideand-seek in order to actually find that option because it's not available whilst using any of the default shooting modes instead you actually need to navigate over to the dedicated video mode using the mode dial and then head up to the advanced movie modes and select it from there for some reason but don't get too excited because as I found out 4K capture is capped at 15 frames per second on this camera basically meaning that the results are unusable by today standards and although it does include a micro HDMI port for attaching a monitor there's no hot shoe no headphone and no mic jackpots either so this camera really isn't geared up for any kind of series video work anyway but that said Nikon did get a number of things right with this camera the biggest win being the autofocus as even by today's standard this camera is rapid as I mentioned earlier this camera entirely relies on an electronic shutter there's no mechanical shutter at all which I know will split some opinions but one key advantage to this is that it can operate completely silently in fact the first time that I shot with this camera it did take me a little while to get used to this idea because there's no visual or audio que to signify when a photo has been taken you've just got to kind of trust that once you fully depress the shutter button the camera is going to do its thing which to be fair it seemed to do without failure you can of course turn on the artificial shutter sounds if you don't mind your ears bleeding but I actually love the fact that this thing is such a silent shooter particularly for situations where you need to shoot Incognito now despite the small sensor the image quality is actually very respectable with the raw files producing nice natural colors and plenty of dynamic range for pulling back details from the highlights and shadows although 20.8 megapix images may seem a little low res in today's world where we're more accustomed to 30 or 40 megapixel chips the images this thing turns out are still plenty large enough for cropping in post and producing decent Siz prints if that's your thing though let's be honest most of us will only ever post our images online and in which case this camera is more than up to the job also as a slight side note all of the images you're seeing here have been edited using my Lightroom preset pack which is available for purchase on my website if you're interested oh make sure sure you use the discount code on screen now to receive an additional 10% off now I can't obviously talk about image quality without also mentioning the lens that I've been using on this camera and as I mentioned at the start of the video I actually bought this J5 bundled alongside this 18.5 mm f1.8 prime lens now at first glance an 18.5 mm lens may sound like a super wide focal length but when you consider that this 1-in sensor has a crop factor of around 2.7 times after doing the maths you'll realize that the images you end up creating will look something closer to that produced by a 50 mm lens on a fullframe camera now another thing to consider is that with lenses this small and front elements this small even at f1.8 you really can't expect to capture images with a super thick and pleasing Boker unless of course you are able to shoot up close and personal with your subject but for Street and travel photography this may not be a deal breaker I think the saddest thing about this nickon J5 is that it's probably going to be consigned to the history books as being a failure but if you are prepared to look past its and play to its strengths then there's actually a lot to love about this imperfectly perfect pocket camera

Channel: Tom Calton

Views: 46,267

Keywords: tom calton, tom carlton, street photography, street photography camera, street photographer, travel camera, travel photography camera, nikon 1 j5, nikon j5, nikon j5 review, nikon j5 mirrorless camera, nikon j5 street photography, nikon 1 j5 street photography, small mirrorless camera, cheap mirrorless camera, cheap mirrorless camera for photography, budget mirrorless camera, small street photography camera, smallest street photography camera, tiny camera, small camera

Id: oAvbEQS08s8

Length: 10min 5sec (605 seconds)

Published: Sat May 11 2024