Hello everyone Happy New Year. (The first of many if you cover enough different cultures as I do here in Atlanta!)

In cleaning up work and old photos I think I’m going to start off with posting random camera gear thoughts and “reviews” that have been sitting on the back burner for so long. Again, I’ve never claimed to be an internet new media gear reviewer, just a creative that gets great joy out of being the end user of a piece of imaging technology. You can find the technical specs elsewhere, as I mainly focus on the pictures, isn’t that what is most important?

My old Nikon 10mm f/2.8 samples page (Link Here) actually ranks first on the ol’ Google search results oddly enough. What did I do with all those internet points? Absolutely nothing! 🙂 So here’s a follow up with another review + random image post of the:

Nikon 18.5mm f/1.8 1 System CX lens

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What is this lens?

A 50mm equivalent prime for the Nikon small camera CX 1″ system

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Way back in late 2011 when the 1 system was new Nikon also had some primes you could buy. Since I’d spent a good bit on the kit combo, I forget about these lenses until a few years ago. In this photography open world multiplayer RPG, there’s always something else that diverts cash/runes, consumables like computers, hard drives and memory cards. The 10mm f/2.8 was the 28mm FF equiv FOV street and landscape lens, and the 18.5mm f/1.8 was the 50mm FF equiv portrait/normal lens. I didn’t get either of these lenses until much after Nikon killed the system and this series of cameras was also abandoned by consumers due to the shoddy build quality of the kit zoom lenses and other imaging related things like horrible in low light, etc.

Like most everything camera related though, you have to find what that specific tool is special at and work within those strengths.

A Nikon J/V series camera with the 18.5mm f/1.8 is about the equivalent to a FF 50mm f/5 lens. It’s small, light, and doesn’t scream professional camera. With most of the ones on the used market being the White color, if anything it screams toy digicam.

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Why would you want one?

It’s small and light. It focuses pretty close for arm length camera shots.  It’s sharp and usable at f/1.8 all day.  The light falloff vignette can be purposely accentuated, making the images look like they were shot on larger sensors.  Mounted on a 1 series camera it’s a silent minimum ~5 fps setup that delivers RAW .nef files that are some of the best in the industry. Don’t just take my word for it. Both hobbyists and professionals know the power of a Nikon raw file when shot in good light at base ISO.

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How much does it cost in 2025?

Today the Nikon 1 series cameras is unwanted and unloved by the masses and not as trendy as vintage digicams and Fuji cameras. This lens normally goes for $175+ used and the bodies range in price from $70-300. So you could luck out and only spend $250 for this combo. Truly a bargain in today’s increasing prices because you get a camera setup that delivers raw files as good as a D200, D90, D7000, K10D, Rebel T series, etc.

It’s going to take an internet photographer/youtuber/influencer way more popular than me (which isn’t hard at all) to drive up the prices and make this cool. Nikon tried to make this a thing with Ashton Kutcher on release and that didn’t go so well. So crazy how fortune 500 companies are beholden to and at the mercy of folks on youtube running empires out of their spare bedroom.

Again Nikon missed a golden opportunity in actually making this a Coolpix Pro series, and sticking the electronics in a vintage shell.

The only thing I see somewhat being a rare pokemon in the point and shoot Nikon world is the Coolpix A, with its D7000 level APS-C sensor and 28mm equiv lens. If I can find a cheap one online I’d definitely think about getting one.  We also missed out on the announced but never released DL series of fixed lens 1″ sensor cameras.  I can only imagine the prices.

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What types of images can I create with it? Do the files hold up in editing? What’s the CA like? What’s the dynamic range of the files?

I’ll answer all that with: the differences in cameras is pretty slight, the differences in the people that use them are vast. Here are some pretty pictures to look at so you can decide yourself. All these taken over the years and seasons with the 18.5mm on a J1 or V1. The sensors are exactly the same. The V1 has an EVF so that is good for some situations.

Nikon 18.5mm f/1.8: Portraits Landscapes Food Product Samples

Again, with almost all Nikon cameras I’ve found that you can get best results by shooting raw and editing it in the native Nikon software. Nikon has the latest Capture NX-D, and it’s not bad. It’s still the best, most pure way to access the color that was meant from the manufacturer. You can turn off NR completely to access the pure acuity of the files, and see the exact Auto white balance. You can choose to accentuate the vignette light fall off that this lens has, or get rid of it completely. You can lower the sharpening, contrast, and saturation to 0, giving the files a slight filmic LOG look that you can export and edit in your software of choice.

You can also auto correct the slight barrel distortion that this 18.5mm lens has.

The Nikon 1″ CX sensors has plenty of good stuff in the raw file to take a photo into whatever creative editing style you want.  Whether it be the default Vibrant look Nikons are known for, or the muted soft film like low contrast look.

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This 18.5mm and the 10mm are probably the best food camera lenses I have

This is what I mean by arm length photo.  It’s a 50mm FF equiv FOV but the working distance of the 18.5mm means you can take pictures of stuff you are holding or pictures of back LCDs of cameras

Different camera systems are like bands. Some get extremely popular for whatever reason. Others don’t get popular until after the band broke up. Some musicians put out high quality work and don’t get the recognition they deserve, like shoe gazing bands that make lovely music but would never pack out festivals. This lens and the 1 system is quite capable, but it was a sales flop.  It draws different enough from a phone to be very usable today and perhaps collectable in the future.  After all, can you or I make a point and shoot interchangeable lens camera of this quality on our own? Definitely not. Will the big companies ever make anything like this again? Probably not, the profit margins are too slim, they moved their product line to be very high end, and anything would get beaten up by the smartphone anyway.

So here’s another unwanted, not very popular camera combo that I honestly highly suggest, a Nikon J1 or V1 with the 18.5mm f/1.8 prime lens! The equiv 50mm is a focal length that many, including myself, trained on in the “FF” 35mm film days so it’s a natural fit.

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(I would like to own and test the other Nikon 1 series lenses, but sadly I’ve read too many horror stories of failures like the 10-30mm kit lens.  $650+ for the 32mm f/1.2 (85mm equiv) that has a dwindling life bar with every click is a bit much.

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As a product photography lens, I think this combo is king. I’ve used this lens to shoot almost all the shots of cameras and gear on this website/blog. f/1.8 on a smaller sensor gives adequate depth of field so you can actually shoot wide open all the time. With diffraction you might not even need to stop down past f/2.8 on this. This is a situation where a full frame camera might not be the optimal tool if you’re going to stop down the lens to f/16 or f/22 anyway.  The raw files from the 1 series cameras are super small too and it takes no time to edit and export them.

I shot all these camera product shots with the Nikon 18.5mm f/1.8: