Nikon surely took their time to enter the mirrorless market, but what they came up with looks more like the desperate attempt at being different rather than a product that has actually got a market. (Although dpreview claim to know how this makes sense for Nikon as a company.)

Nikon V1 CX-format system camera

The new Nikon 1 mirrorless system is built around the new CX sensor format which is 2.7x smaller than 35mm full-frame, which makes it 1.35x smaller than Micro Four Thirds. Theoretically, this means the CX system allows for more compact bodies and lenses than Micro Four Thirds, but it also means that there is less space on the sensor for each photosite, which may eventually lead to inferior image quality.

To address the latter problem, Nikon made the wise decision to limit the pixel count for their V1 and J1 models to 10 megapixels, allowing for an individual pixel size almost the same as on current Olympus 12mp Micro Four Thirds sensors.

Nikon J1 CX-format mirrorless camera

The main diffrence between the entry-level J1 and enthusiast V1 models is that the latter sports a magnesium body and a 1.4 million dot viewfinder. Considering the CX format’s identity in size with 1″ CCTV and television systems (hence the name “Nikon 1”?), this makes the V1 especially attractive for those wishing to adapt manual C-mount lenses to a mirrorless body.

The Nikon 1 system will come with a choice of three lenses for the start: a 10mm f/2.8 pancake prime lens (27mm eq.), a 10-30mm f/3.8-5.6 standard zoom (27-81mm eq.), a 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6 tele zoom (81-297mm eq.) and a 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 super zoom (27-270mm eq.). It eludes my why there are no faster lenses available right away, but this being an “intermediate” system bridging between enthusiast compacts and Nikon’s DSLR line, this may make some kind of sense in a marketing strategic kind of way, I assume.

I spare you the complete list of technical details and direct you to the respecitve announcements of the J1 and V1 over at dpreview.com, who also have a gallery of hands-on pictures featuring both models.