Nikon 1 10-30mm VR Review

Summary

As I have shown in this review, the Nikon 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 VR is a great kit lens for the Nikon 1 mirrorless camera system. It has a very useful zoom range of 27-81mm (equivalent to 35mm), collapsible barrel design, vibration reduction, compact size, low weight and a great optical design, making it a lens of choice for everyday photography on Nikon 1 cameras. It is a sharp lens with good contrast and colors, and its performance is pretty good both in the center and in the corners.

One important fact to note here, is that due to the smaller size of the camera sensor and its pixels, all 1 Nikkor lenses, including the 10-30mm are sharpest at around the f/5.6 mark. Anything smaller than that, especially above f/11 severely impacts image quality due to diffraction. This differs from the typical f/8-f/11 aperture range you might be used to on DSLR lenses. If you shoot in Aperture Priority or Manual modes, try not to go smaller than f/5.6, if you want to get the sharpest image. It is OK to stop down to f/8 to get more depth of field, but definitely not a good idea to go any further. You will just end up degrading image quality too much.

Overall, the Nikon 10-30mm is a great kit lens for the Nikon 1 cameras. I enjoyed shooting with it while testing the Nikon 1 V1 and J1 cameras and managed to take plenty of great images. I believe Nikon did a good job in picking the Nikon 1 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 VR as a kit lens for the Nikon 1 cameras.