Mirrorless Pics: Indiana World War Memorial with the Nikon 1 J4

One of the best things about the Nikon 1 J4 is it lets me use the word "antepenultimate" in a sentence, because after its launch in January of 2014, Nikon only released the Nikon 1 AW1 and the 1 J5 before discontinuing the entire Nikon 1 line of cameras. Their first attempt at a mirrorless system had been a marketplace failure.

"Antepenultimate" happens to be my third favorite word. Anyway...

On a visit to the Indianapolis World War Memorial the other day, I mounted the little 1 Nikkor 10mm f/2.8 lens on the 1 J4 and tucked it into the space in my Lowepro Event Messenger 100 bag that normally holds the long 30-110mm zoom lens.

On the 1" Nikon CX-format sensor, the 10mm lens offers the same field of view as a 28mm lens on a full-frame camera. Wide angle, to be sure, but not crazy wide. I can always use the practice with a wide angle lens, because I don't really "see" images at fields of view much wider than the one offered by a 40 or 50mm lens.

I keep the Nikon 1 cameras set up to save each image as both a high-res monochrome JPEG and also as a RAW file. The photo of the World War Memorial above is an unedited JPEG straight out of the camera.

The photo below is lightly cropped. It shows off the level of detail that can be delivered by the 18MP 1" sensor, especially at its base ISO of 160.

After exploring the inside and outside of the Memorial, we ventured a block south to University Park.

It was a gorgeous day for early November in Indy. Nearly sixty degrees by lunchtime with a bit of a breeze and hardly a cloud in the sky.

I still don't really have that eye for wide angle lenses I'd like, but I'm getting a better feel for them.

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