Nikon 1-Series Cameras to Get 4K Video Support and Brighter Lenses

Nikon’s 1-Series cameras have proven to be quite popular in the short time since they’ve been out, but despite their success the Japanese company doesn’t plan to rest on its laurels.

According to a high ranking Nikon official, the company has already started thinking about the improvements it will bring to its next-gen of interchangeable lens cameras.

Tetsuya Yamamoto, Nikon's head of development, talked to DPreview about these plans during CES 2012, where he revealed that quite a few improvements would make their way into the next-gen 1 System cameras.

The most important of these is the addition of 2K and 4K video recording, as Yamamoto believes that the 10.1MP sensor fitted inside the 1-Series bodies is powerful enough to support this feature.

Furthermore, the company’s rep also talked about the need for a set of brighter lenses with faster auto-focusing, while the V1 successor could also receive manual AF control and in-camera RAW editing support.

The Nikon V1 and the J1 started selling at the end of October 2011, and both of these include a 10.1 megapixel CMOS sensor, dual-core EXPEED processing engine, a 1200fps slow motion capture mode, as well as a 10fps burst shooting mode.

Full HD video capture is also supported, users having the option to choose between 1080/30p or 1080/60i, with the movie files recorded being capped at 29 minutes.

Compared to its smaller brother, the J1 also adds a built-in flash, auto-noise reduction on movie clips and a 73-point auto-focus system, all fitted inside a magnesium alloy chassis.

The 10.1MP image sensor installed in both of these cameras, uses the newly introduced CX form factor (13.2mmx8.8mm) with a crop factor of 2.7x, which is significantly smaller than the sensors used by Nikon's competitors, most of them going for Micro Four Thirds or APS-C, while ISO speed is limited at 3200.

Sadly, Nikon’s rep hasn’t mentioned when the company plans to unveil the successors of the V1 and J1, or if these will coexist with the current models.