Q: I'm moving to Finland next week and got a side job as a photographer for 4 clubs. I'm new to photography and travel a lot, so I purchased the Nikon 1 J1. I was wondering if you had any knowledge on which lens would be best to use for this? They will be packed indoor clubs and will be expected to take all different types of pictures which people can be tagged in. Also do you recommend a certain Photoshop?
A: I've never used or even held a Nikon 1 J1, but it seems like it's a very reasonably priced compact and portable digital camera. It looks like an ideal camera for beginners to use for travel photography especially if they don't want to lug around a digital SLR and a bunch of lenses.
I'm not really familiar with the Nikon 1 J1, so I would assume that the appropriate lens to use with it is the 10-30mm zoom lens. There's also a Nikon FT1 Adapter that can be used to mount F-mount lenses (both DX and those designed for full-frame DSLRs) on the J1. This would significantly increase the number of lenses that can be used. However, to be completely honest, I still don't think that the Nikon 1 J1 is suitable for nightclub photography.
The Nikon 1 J1 does not have a hot shoe for an external flash; it only has the built in pop up flash. As I've mentioned on my site, having an external flash unit is almost a requirement for taking awesome nightclub pictures since it's going to be the main light source. Since the J1 is more or less comparable to a point and shoot camera, I would also assume that there's going to be some shutter lag. The noise level might also not be as good as a DSLR on high ISOs.
Please see my previous post about my recommendation for a camera setup.
For basic photo editing, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is the one that most photographers use.
