Guilty As Charged, M'Lud

" My client wishes to plead guilty to the charge of using camera equipment to do things that it was never intended for, M'Lud. He tenders images taken with the Nikon 1 camera in evidence. He wishes to have it noted that he is well aware that most of the customers of the shop probably make just as many inappropriate experiments as he does and would like to see what their results look like..." I would also like to make it clear that I'm not the expert you want to talk to about the Nikon 1 system - that's Stan Davies. When he gets back from Japan catch him and bend his ear, or read some of the articles he has written about travel photography with this system. But nevertheless, the waterproof Nikon 1 was sitting there and as the previous post was also on an underwater camera, I thought it would make a nice comparison. A little unfair as it has a bigger sensor and interchangeable lens but it is also a pretty compact sort of thing. You can use it for over-water shots as well. The basic problem of an underwater camera is the waterproof sealing - and you can see the extent to which Nikon has taken theirs with the large O-ring and flange around the lens. It's a tight , but smooth turn for the lens and certainly feels positive when it locks in. There's also a double dose of it for the battery door and the card slot on one edge and the data attachment point on the other. Nikon have placed a diagrammatic tutorial into the menu of the camera that plays through half a dozen pictures to compel you to check the seals and to flush, blow, and brush off any contaminants before you open those doors. It's a decent-sized battery too - many of the other UW types use very slim batteries and carry a lot less capacity. The control section is pretty standard, as is the ( surprising ) pop-up flash. I am assuming it is all as waterproof as they say on the box. Results on the table? Better noise level, a little less DOF. Positive locking from the AF mechanism, and the use of an Aperture priority program was a little easier to implement than the last camera. I'd be prepared to declare it pretty much of a draw for my purposes, and in both cases would probably revert to the Fujifilm X series with short lenses. Note the new additions to the motor pool - the Queen Mary trailer is going to have a crashed Curtiss Tomahawk fuselage dumped in it as soon as I can find an RAF Coles crane.