So, who else bought the Nikon J4 and Underwater case ?

Nikoniser

I did, plus the FT-1 mount, and have been having a blast with it. Its been in my Kayak, in the swimming pool, I have put it on the 600 AF-S F4, its been hilarious.

So I thought I would put together a few tips I picked up, and hopefully anyone else who has bought it can chip in and save anyone else time.

1. Get FF DSLR quality : http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1352926 This really works : I tested it and got HUGE Dynamic range, better than my D810 and could shoot at ISO 6400 without noise. Shame it only works on static subjects and takes forever to process.
I paired it with a Manfrotto Pixo tripod, and now it comes hiking with me and is a lightweight alternative to my DSLR.

2. FT-1 Mount - this is a lot of fun, although I did hit limitations with focus accuracy and lens sharpness, and was a bit hit and miss. I found you MUST be in AF-C mode so get any kind of good focus result. My 55-200 was a very weak, my 100 2.8 Macro was surprisingly poor, however the 35mm 1.8 DX was fantastic above f2.8 and the big surprise was the Mk1 AF-S 600 F4 - although you sometimes had to manually prod the focus it was suprisingly sharp and contrasty.

3. RAW Files - Need Adobe RAW which you can get from http://swupdl.adobe.com/updates/oobe/aam20/win/PhotoshopCameraRaw7-7.0/8.5.50/setup.zip to work with the file in lightroom. DXO optics also works well with this camera, and PRIME noise reduction seems essential.

4. WP-N3 Waterproof case works really well, very good quality. I have not found a great way of taking pics underwater in the limited time I have had it, auto modes don't seem to work well, I am currently using af-c, single point focus, face detection deactivated, shutter priority set to 1/400, 10fps. Any tips gratefully received. I also found DXO optics "de-haze" feature works well on underwater photos.

5. Micro SD Card. I put a SanDisk SDSDQXN-032G-FFPA Extreme microSDHC UHS-I Class 10 U3 Memory Card in , works well, takes about 20 seconds to clear the 20 shot buffer.

Anyone else got any tips ?

heartyfisher

I dont understand the value of ETTR ...

Nikoniser

Honestly, I don't see the need to shoot 3 stops + like he suggests, just 1 stop seems to work just fine. The idea is to use all the headroom up in RAW for really great shadows.

Spy_Black

I don't worry too much about the noise, I accept that the sensor sucks. It's amazing how much noise there is at base ISO, but if need be a little noise reduction calms things down. If you have LR 5.6 or greater it recognizes the camera, no need for the RAW updater.

I have yet to go diving with it (which is the main reason I bought it), although this month should do it. Fingers crossed that the underwater case holds up at depth.

I too bought an FT1 because I don't plan on investing in the Nikon 1 system other than this combo. Got an FT1 used on ebay for $130, the $240 new price is utterly overpriced. My biggest gripe is the crippleware approach to this system, one being you can't use the FT1 at exposures longer than 1 second. This could be an interesting astro camera if you could take long exposures, but alas...

One interesting observation I've seen is why this camera was marketed primarily at women. This thing is the tech equivalent of a puppy. Every woman that sees this camera falls in love with it. :-)

Ironheart

One interesting observation I've seen is why this camera was marketed primarily at women. This thing is the tech equivalent of a puppy. Every woman that sees this camera falls in love with it. :-)

+1 My wife loves my V3 and the 10-30 PD lens. The lens because it has a built-in lens cap, and the camera because it's small and has wifi :-)

Nikoniser

+2 My wife loves it. The exact comment was "why didn't you buy one of these before instead of that big heavy thing ? "

10-30 PD lens is suprisingly good. I saw a lot of reviews say it was soft, but I shot a bunch of iso 12233 charts and it is just as sharp if not sharper than most consumer Nikon lenses on my D3200. And it is sharp wide open, without any real chromatic abberation, so you don't need to stop it down at all.

Overall considering the absolute panning this camera got from reviewers, I have been pleased.