Nikon 1 J2: a lot of fluff and not very much substance

Nikon released its 1 series cameras, the J1 and V1, to a great deal of fanfare last year, insisting that they were game-changers in the world of mirror-less camera technology. The press release managed a sentence as gushingly hyperbolic as: 'These cameras don’t just manipulate light – they redefine photography by manipulating time…' But whilst the PR gurus wanted us to imagine that we were living in some kind of Sci-Fi fantasy with these cameras, the reality was slightly less fantastic. The general consensus was that they didn't offer enough control for people who wanted it, they were fiddly to use, the sensor was far too small, and they were expensive. Anyone wanting a mirror-less camera was better off looking elsewhere.

Eleven months on, and Nikon has announced the J1's cunningly named successor, the J2. Is this the camera that could make Nikon a serious force in the mirror-less camera market?

Ehm, no. Sorry to be so blunt this early in the morning. After wading through the general guff of the PR, you're looking at the same basic camera with the addition of some new toys and a cosmetic upgrade. It has the same 10 megapixel CMOS sensor; same EXPEED 3 processor; same sensitivity of ISO 100 to 3,200 (extendable to 6,400); same–admittedly very impressive–73 point phase-detection autofocusing; it even has the same Smart Photo Selector tool that automagically selects the five best shots from a run of 20 and presents them to you for your delectation.

So what is new? Presuming that there is actually something new and Nikon hasn't managed to send out the same press release 11 months later?

Well, they've added a Creative Mode to the dial, so that you can stitch panoramas or miniaturise or soft focus or selectively colour or take night landscapes or night portraits or backlight your images more easily.

The chassis is now made of metal, and comes in six (black, white, silver, red, pink, or orange) colours.

And the resolution of the LCD screen has been increased.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is about that. I've read the press release several times looking for something glaring that I've missed, but seriously, that's it. I'm beginning to think that J might stand for 'Joke'.

Oh, actually, I did miss something. The price has been dropped. With a 10-30mm kit lens, you're looking at $550. Yes, that's right, $550 for a camera that is essentially a glorified point-and-shoot. (Nikon UK was a bit slow off the mark with its PR, but UK pricing has just come through at £500; €605 in the Eurozone.)

Nikon, if you paid people to upgrade the J1 and they came up with this, then more fool you. This isn't an upgrade; this is the equivalent of a five year old sitting at her mother's dressing table and smearing lipstick over her mouth and jabbing a mascara wand into her eye. But the difference is that the five year old is cute and endearing; the J2 is an embarrassing joke.

Some very odd goings-on at Olympus

Oh Olympus, you’re supposed to be in the news for developing exciting camera technology, not for sacking your newly appointed British CEO, issuing contradictory statements about financial transactions, behaving in a way that could generally be perceived as a bit unusual, and seeing your share prices drop by 40% because of it all. But that, in a nutshell, is what’s happened. And it has all happened very quickly. So here’s a potted history of the Japanese camera giant, the British CEO, and the alleged financial irregularities.

Just over two weeks ago Michael Woodford was appointed CEO of Olympus. He was already the company’s President and he’d worked for them for over 30 years. So when they sacked him on Friday, citing a cash of management styles, it seemed a bit, well, odd. I mean, you might think that they’d have known how he operated after so long with them, wouldn’t you? And if his management style were so problematic, how had he managed to rise so high and then be appointed CEO? Perhaps something else was going on?

According to Woodford, yes, something else was going on. And it was very odd. Woodford had noticed some accounting irregularities and asked auditors PriceWaterhouseCoopers to take a closer look. He’d spotted that a payment made to a Cayman Islands-based company as part of the take-over deal of Gyrus (a medical imaging company) was on the excessive side. According to Woodford, it’s usual to pay a fee of 1 or 2% of the total sale price to the broker when a takeover happens. Olympus paid about $2billion for Gyrus, and around $675m in fees to the mysterious Cayman Islands company. So in this instance the fee paid was 36%; he thought that this deserved investigation.

It seems that everyone else at Olympus wasn’t quite so convinced that it needed further investigation and maybe this was the clash of management styles to which they were referring, rather than that he’d uncovered something that he shouldn’t have? Sort of like, not washing the company’s dirty linen in public. Whatever, Woodford was summarily dismissed, told to hand over the keys to his flat (of which he owned 51%), and informed that his driver wouldn’t be able to take him to the airport.

Yesterday, Woodford turned up at the Serious Fraud Office in London and presented them with all of the evidence that he’d accumulated associated with what he regarded as Olympus’ not-quite-okay dealings. In return, Olympus has said that it plans to take legal action against Woodford. It has also denied and confirmed making an excessive payment to the Cayman Islands company.

Since Friday, when Woodford was dismissed, Olympus’ shares have plummeted by about 40%. That’s swiped $3.2 billion off of its market value. That’s a super high price to pay for a divergent management style, isn’t it?

Woodford has given quite a few interviews since his return to the UK. You can hear his own explanation of things to both Channel 4, embedded below, and to the BBC.

This murky and convoluted story is one that could run for a while yet. It’ll be very interesting to see how it unfolds.

Nokia's film shot on a phone

It was only a matter of time. After a professional fashion shoot done using an iPhone and Sony announcing that it has a 16 megapixel sensor ready to go in its camera phones, a film shot on a mobile phone had to be next. Nokia has taken that honour.

It’s called The Commuter and it has been filmed in its entirety using Nokia’s brand spanking new N8. And to prove just how serious they were about their camera technology (it’s a 12 megapixel number with a Carl Zeiss lens and a Xenon flash), they recruited Dev Patel, Pamela Anderson, Ed Westwick, and Charles Dance to the cause. Oh, and it has been directed by an up-and-coming groovy duo, the McHenry brothers.

There’s a behind-the-scenes video of the video so you can see how they got on, too:

I’m just wondering how good the phone bit of this phone is…

The Nokia N8 is available from Nokia from 15 October. The film premieres towards the end of the month.