The Nikon 1

[Photo-John]

Nice, Charles! So you were at one of the intro events? I didn't even find out about it until the announcement. I'm gonna have to have a talk with my Nikon contacts about that.

Did they have any information about how they managed to combine phase detect and contrast detect auto focus? That's the biggest question in my mind - how did they do it? I'm also very interested in the auto focus performance. It's easy enough for them to give us specs about shooting speed. But auto focus is really something you have to experience.

[Franglais]

I got a mail from Nikon France yesterday announcing the camera with a mention that there was a display outside the Beaubourg museum in the center of Paris. This is near where I change trains every day so I made a detour. There were the usual bright young Nikon demonstrators - the girl guessed why I was looking baffled at one point and explained the 20-shot trick.

Next opportunity will be in two weeks time at the Salon de la Photo. There are always a few heavyweight technicians on the stand, I will ask about the autofocus if we haven't figured it out by then.

There is certainly no PSAM on the dial. I was lost. I just picked it up and used it, like a consumer. It was certainly easy, and with the yellow rectangles showing me what the camera thought were important areas (faces), I probably had a high proportion of successful shots.

Reply to Greg: As far as I can make out there is no mechanical shutter. There is no noise anyway. My guess is that the sensor is continuously exposed to the light and the "exposure" is just taking a slice out of the reading (or rather 20 slices while you are pressing the shutter release).

[Photo-John]

You guys really need to take a few minutes to read my article. I worked on it all day yesterday and a lot of the questions you are asking are answered there. The V1 has both an electronic and a mechanical shutter. The J1 just has an electronic shutter. When it uses the mechanical shutter is the question. If it's silent then it's probably not using it. But they say it makes a 1/250th of a second flash sync possible. So it must use it for flash.