Ok so I had a little camera with big potential. It all started when I found out that I was going to shoot the Tavistock Tournament. I was talking to Erik Kuna, the head of our video department and he told me that he had always wanted to try out using the Nikon 1 V2 for a golf tournament. Being the generous sole that I am... I decided to steal his idea and take one out for a spin... or shoot.
Now the V2 is a tiny little camera, but it has a couple of neat things going for it... First it is mirrorless which means it is silent and fast... 15 Frames per second... or more. Second, if you use the lens converter for your regular lenses, it gives it a 2.6x teleconversion: so that means that you can use a 70-200mm as a 520mm lens at F2.8 on the long end.
To find out how it went... keep reading.
Steve and Mike with their big cameras... me sporting the mighty mirrorless. I put it on a tripod to be cool like Mike!
Besides the extra zoom, I really like the idea of being silent. Sometimes I enjoy watching what is going on with the players while someone else is putting. With my Canon I have to keep one eye on the guy setting up and only shoot when it won't disturb them, but with the silent but deadly mirrorless, I can spot a good pose or player interaction and not have to worry about my noise.
What about image quality? I was quite happy with the quality that I got from the V2, and at 14 megapixels it is going to be more than enough for most anything you are going to need it for. If I was going to shoot this tournament again my ideal setup would be to have two of these cameras... one set for a wide angle that I can shoot environment shots around the tee and the green and a second with the 70-200mm for the long shots. I had the lenses to swap out from one to the other, but I missed a few shots because of fiddling with lenses.
The silence of the mirrorless allows for shooting throughout the swing and at 15 FPS means that you can capture new angles like when the player is tensed just before the ball strike... or make a really annoy animated .gif like this one. :D
Here is a shot from right behind the player and even though I got the shot of him in his backswing, I liked this shot better. This would be an ideal situation to set up one of these with a wide angle with a remote beforehand.
Ok, so I tweaked this one a little... vignette and added some extra blur, but I am still happy with the shot. Hey, I am not shooting this for a newspaper or magazine, so I can play around a bit more.
Another shot at 200mm... or as the EXIF info says... 35mm equivalent of 520mm.
Another blatant Tiger shot... well because I can. :P
Here is what I am talking about capturing the moment right before the ball strike with the player all tensed up... even though the background is not my favorite I like the action.
Battery Life: because of the EVF (electronic view finder) battery life was not great. I had two batteries and needed every bit of each one, even though I was only doing part time shooting with it. So you would want to have a spare for sure or be very careful with power usage.
The second thing that you will want to know if that it has a lot of features... almost too many... you can do so many different things with dials and buttons. I found that the buttons were a little too sensitive and I keep toggling certain functions on and off inadvertently, but that may not be an issue if i shot with it more. I was not thrilled with the responsiveness of it getting back on subject after I took a shot, until I figured out that I had the review setting switched on and even if I hit the shutter button, it wouldn't switch back to shooting mode as fast as I liked. Once I turned that off, it was much smoother... so much so that sometimes I wasn't sure if I took a shot since there was no feedback from the buttons or sound, and so I would hold the button down longer to make sure, only to find out I had taken 40 very silent shots... when I only wanted one or two. :D So there is definitely a learning curve to using this camera just like any new toy, but I have to say I am impressed with what this little camera can do.
So am I still a Canon shooter? You bet. I even checked with double naught spy contacts at Canon and asked about what would be comparable. Canon has an EOS-M (mirrorless) but it only shoots 4.3 FPS, and it isn't on par with the Nikon... so in this case I have to give a win to the other guys. But when we start talking about the high-end stuff, give me a 1DX any day. But if you are a wedding shooter who needs a silent system or someone who is trying to start shooting sports and can't afford the big glass, this may be a great option... provided you shoot Nikon. I hope this helps you if you are thinking about this camera.
