In the Field

The Ubiquitous Red-breasted Nuthatch - With the Nikon V1! Findlay Creek, BC, Canada. January 8, 2012.

Red-breasted Nuthatches are exceptionally common in my neck of the woods and they have a very broad distribution in Canada and the northern USA - it is found from the east to west coasts of both countries. Striking little birds, their abundance (and nervous, almost "twitching" movements) makes them a good subject when testing camera equipment (and they do test the shooter's reflexes too!).

After I got over my initial "the Nikon 1 cameras have too small of a sensor to be anything but a toy" bias, and once I discovered that these little cameras have a 2.7x crop or "magnification" factor (loose terminology for sure, but most will know what I mean) and also found out that there was an adapter coming to allow the use of "real" Nikkor lenses on the Nikon 1 cameras, I became intrigued. Hmmm...my cherished and nearly flawless 200 f2 VR would functionally become a 540mm f2. And, the incomparable 400mm f2.8 VRII would become a 1080mm f2.8! Both of these combinations absolutely intrigued me. And, I thought my 400mm f2.8 - paired with my V1 - just might become an awesome tool for photographing little dickey birds. Good working distance and surely you could produce pleasingly blurred backgrounds at moderate apertures? But would the FT1 mount adapter (that allows the use of most Nikkor lenses on the Nikon 1 cameras) work well enough, and would the entire system integrate well enough, to actually be useful for "serious" bird work? To be perfectly honest - I was skeptical. But over this past weekend I was able to spend a few hours making test shots with a variety of lenses, including the 70-200mm f2.8 VRII, the 200 f2 VR (with and without a 1.4x teleconverter), and the 400mm f2.8VRII. And, to make a long story short - WOW! The results definitely surpassed my expectations.

Take this shot, for example. This was captured using my V1 paired with a 400mm f2.8 VRII, for an effective focal length of 1080mm). Not bad, eh? It's definitely sharp enough for publication in virtually ANY glossy magazine (compositionally it may not be, but that's subjective and this IS a test shot!). I haven't got a mental 3D map constructed on the depth of field (or DoF) characteristics of each of my lenses at various apertures when mounted on the V1 yet (like I do when they're used on my DSLR's), but the view few the viewfinder does give you a very good proxy of the actual depth of field (it should be a perfect representation of the DoF, as you're looking at what the sensor sees) but the electronic viewfinder has some limitations (but it does make one think that very high resolution electronic viewfinders on DSLR's might not be such a bad thing - something I would have thought of as heresy until recently). Anyway...it could be argued that this shot is a tad shy on DoF (but this is a subjective argument). There is some colour noise/moire visible on the primaries of the bird's right wing (the rusty patches on the left primaries are accurate - this bird had rusty plumage there), but I could have easily dealt with this in post processing if I wanted.

Some will argue or think it's ludicrous to mount a 11 lb $9000 lens on such a relatively cheap and "toy" camera. But most professionals don't think this way - they (and I) am concerned about tools that work and that can be used to produce quality images (and, of course, that can generate revenue). And, I have heard some talk about how (and this is a direct quote) "Now you can use that camera with a 600mm f4 plus 1.4x TC for an effective focal length of 2,268mm". Well, there ARE limits to how far you can push things - most who've used uber-focal length lenses realize that after about 1000mm you run into so many challenges imposed by DoF, keeping the entire system still enough, and even atmospheric effects, that you'll capture nothing but documentary shots of rare species and such with Nikon 1 cameras paired with the longest primes. Things like Orca fin ID shots, sasquatches/yetis, and the like! And, one has to remember that compared to Nikon's pro offerings in the DSLR market, the Nikon 1 cameras have much more finite high ISO capabilities (and that will make it tough to use the Nikon 1's with super telephoto lenses in many conditions).

But, at the end of the day, the "V1-connected-to-real-Nikkor-lenses" option does open up the door to some interesting possibilities. I'm becoming happier by the day that I invested in a Nikon 1 system. And the addition of the FT1 mount adapter only strengthens those feelings (in a big, big, way).

The Nikon 1 system isn't perfect, but it does offer some interesting and real options to those willing to think and work "outside the box" (gawd I hate that expression!).

Thank you Nikon.

Behind the Camera

The Ubiquitous Red-breasted Nuthatch - With the Nikon V1! Findlay Creek, BC, Canada. January 8, 2012.

Digital Capture; Compressed RAW (NEF) 12-bit format; ISO 200.

Nikon V1 paired with Nikkor 400mm f2.8 VRII lens (using mount adapter FT1) - EFL of 1080mm. Supported on carbon fibre Gitzo 1348 tripod with Wimberley head. VR on and in "Normal" mode.

1/250s @ f5; -1.33 stop compensation from matrix-metered exposure setting.

At the Computer

The Ubiquitous Red-breasted Nuthatch - With the Nikon V1! Findlay Creek, BC, Canada. January 8, 2012.

RAW Conversion to 16-bit TIFF, including first-pass/capture sharpening using Phase One's Capture One Pro 6. Three exposure variants covering a 0.7 stop total range, from -0.2 stops below original capture (for parts of the cheek region of the bird) to 0.5 stops above original exposure (for a few regions on the visible underside of the bird).

Further digital corrections on resulting 16-bit TIFF files using Adobe's Photoshop CS5 and Light Craft's Lightzone. Photoshop adjustments including compositing (layering and masking) the exposure variants, selective colour saturation and desaturation, selective exposure and curves (contrast) adjustment using adjustment layers, and selective sharpening for web output. Final tone tweaking performed using tonemapper/re-light in Lightzone.

Conservation

The Ubiquitous Red-breasted Nuthatch - With the Nikon V1! Findlay Creek, BC, Canada. January 8, 2012.

Information to follow.