When the camera was announced at a Nikon press release last week I initially didn't pay it much heed as I was hoping for a refresh of their Pro DSLR range and I considered this a let down as I wasn't interested in their new consumer cameras or "gimmicky" new mirrorless technology.
A week later whilst reading a review of the Nikon V1 and J1 on DPREVIEW here I realise what I had missed before. Forget about the technology and the specs and mirrorless system. Look at the camera. Nikon has created the most beautiful cameras I have seen in a long long time. For years, the market has been flooded year upon year with countless compact and mini cameras. ALL THE SAME. Every camera maybe a different shade, but all released in a rainbows worth of colours. Who wants that? I used to make a point of knowing everything there was to know about all the new cameras that came out. All the new cybershots, the newest IXUS on the block or the latest Olympus tough camera, even owned a few of them. Don't get me wrong though, modern compact cameras are amazing. I was blown away with one of the latest sony's when playing with one recently in a sony centre. The spec list was unbelievable. It made me think, why didn't my Nikon Dslr have some of those features, but then thought that they were really gimmicks appealing to consumers who really don't know anything about cameras anyway and would be sold by their new shiny having WIFI or BLUETOOTH or GPS..... anyway, I'm just ranting at this point.
Where was I? Oh, the Nikon V1.
When I saw this camera, when I actually looked at it, instead of just brushing past it as one of the new kids on the block, I realised that this one was different. Nikon had done something new here. They have at last taken a step back from the design direction that digital cameras have been heading in the last while. The Nikon V1 looks good, it looks REALLY GOOD! They have stopped messing around with unnecessary design details and brought the camera back to basics. Clean lines. Simple styling. Minimalist. As a designer and photographer this began to appeal on a number of different levels. This is almost Leica like, but in the consumers reach. Until now, the last few years at least, there has been two distinct camera design trends. The ever functionalist look of any brand of DSLR and the multi-coloured rectangle of the consumer compact camera. I suppose there was a third which was all the cameras that came in between these such as bridge cameras and micro 4/3's but these had no design direction and didn't really know where they belonged.
Nikons new offering is really throwing a camera in the works. Not only is it creating a new breed of camera, i.e. an interchangeable lens system which is also mirrorless, but it is also bringing the aesthetic design back to a pure form that is melding design and function together in a beautiful way. Nikon must realise they are onto something here suggested by their naming of the Nikon 1 series. It is as if they intend to start again.. A clean slate perhaps. Re-write their range from inside out. This, I find a very interesting thought. This camera looks so good, what if this thinking and design was applied to their DSLRs. Now that is an interesting thought. I really hope that this is the direction that Nikon are hinting at with this new camera. Now I eagerly await two things. One, getting a chance to handle a Nikon V1 and two, waiting to see what they bring out next. For now look at some of the pretty pictures courtesy of the brilliant dpreview.com and for a full spec list see the dpreview link above too. Ben
