Nikon V1 with FT1 Adapter and 80-400mm, 105mm Micro Lens

Nikon V1 with a 400mm lens makes a combination equivalent of 1080mm.  The image size is about 10.1 MP.  At 300 dpi, it can make a print of 13x18.6 inches.  In Taiwan, the largest size print that I can get from commercial Fuji Frontier printer is only 8x12 inches.  Thus, the image size is more than enough if I do not do any cropping.  The caveat is Nikon 80-400mm VR lens is not a G lens thus can only be used as manual focus lens on V1.  The ISO was set at ASA100 in order to get best image quality.  The combination of camera and lens is quite light weight, but since I need to manual focus, I set them up on my Gitzo GT2541 tripod with G2272M fluid head.  Most shots were done at 400mm (1080mm) thus the VR function of the lens must be shut off.  The focusing aid in the eye piece was quite useful.  When using FT1 on V1, only the center focusing point is working.  That was not too much of a problem.

After toyed around the 80-400mm for a while, I changed to 105mm Micro lens.  This combination is equivalent to 283mm.  The 105mm Micro lens is a G lens, thus auto focusing was working on V1.  Compare to 80-400mm, the 105mm V1 set up is so light weight and easy to use, I shot quite a few images off-hand.  The following images were all shot with 105mm lens except the last one.

When I was ready to pack the camera, I saw what most photographers would hope to see in the nature, something to add interest to the image.  In the distance, a tiny frog was sitting by a water lilly.  Thus I took out and set up the whole thing with the 80-400mm lens again and got the following image.  It is worth the trouble.

The image quality was incredible for these pictures, as good as if not better than my D700.  When I took out my older images that were taken with D700 at the same location.  The size of the images actually was much smaller than the ones from V1, because I had to do a lot of cropping.  Using the 80-400mm and 105mm on V1 given me such a long reach, I hardly need to do any cropping of the pictures.  All of them are around 8x12 inches at 300 dpi.

One famous photographer once said, to make an appealing photographs, we have to think like a bug, getting close and into the scenery.  The long reach of the V1 with 80-400mm and 105mm gave me just that.  Although I was on the solid ground by the pond, looking through the eyepiece, it gave me the feeling that I was a little bug flying in between the flowers,  Although, I would not get too close to the frog!

The take home massage from this exercise is that V1 is capable of delivering very high quality image.  I have all the V1 lenses, they can give images as good as smart phone, which is quite useful.  However, in order to really realize V1's potential, we have to use the lowest ISO possible and FT1 adapter with the much better FX or DX format lenses.