First Impressions...
So...being a Nikon DSLR shooter, the controls are intuitive and similar to other Nikons as you might imagine. Although many controls are menu driven, there are enough manual buttons and dials to make changes on the fly fairly easily.
It balances pretty well in the hand, and focus acquisition is pretty darn good! once focused, there is little shutter lag. the lenses are nice, and racking is smooth. they lock shut, which is nice.
Image quality: simply put...VERRY nice. I'm impressed with the metering - as it does have spot, center and matrix modes. it aslo shoots RAW and RAW+jpg. So that's nice.
the J1 doesn't have a hot shoe mount nor a real eyepiece. not a big deal in my book.
In a nutshell: the camera does what it's designed to do verry well. it's a little gimicky, but not over the top. Would I buy since I have DSLR? Probably not for $650. but Dang...I consider it the BEST POINT AND SHOOT I've shot. when I keep that in mind. it's nice, reallly nice. I have the flexiblity to take images the I want without relying on the camera. It's not as portable as my wife's
real P-n-S.
It's in a weird place in the market right now. the small, interchangable lens thing is a misfit currently. I either want to take my DLSR or my wife's P-n-S. this is somewhere in the middle...for a lot of $$. I might sacrifice the interchangeable lens feature for something smaller. like the Canon G11 or G12.
IT does have a really cool slow motion video feature.
if anyone has questions, lemmeno. I'm having fun with it. I'll post an image or two in the near future.