Saturday I was down in Boulder, Colorado. It wasn’t a great day as far as photography goes but I did get a chance to test my new Nikon 1 V1 doing street photography. Because of it’s small size and exceptionally fast focusing it passed with flying colors. A big plus with this camera is that while shooting video you can also snap off still photos. Unfortunately, photographing while videoing the images are saved as JPG’s. I wish the stills could be saved as RAW files. With the V1 you can shoot in Raw when in any of the other V1’s photo modes. I guess you can’t have everything.
The photo of the deer was taken from inside my car. I was driving along when I caught sigh of the deer at the side of the road. Usually when I stop the car in front of a wild animal it spooks the animal into running away. I never get a chance to press the shutter button. With the V1, I just pointed the camera and snapped the photo. It took about two seconds. A second later the deer was running away. I would not have gotten this photo with any point and shoot cameras that I have previously owned. Also, most likely because of bulkiness of my DSLR cameras by the time I had grabbed one, brought my eye to the viewfinder, composed the shot and focused, the deer would have been gone.
For street photography and situations described above the V1 has exceeded my expectations. -CLG
PS, I believe the instrument the street musician is playing is a customized didjeridoo.