There’s a chance you’ve never even heard of the Nikon 1 J5, or even the Nikon 1 system for that matter. When anybody claims that Nikon was late to the mirrorless camera party with the release of the Nikon Z6 and Nikon Z7, it was actually bang on time. The problem was that the ‘Big N’ backed the wrong horse. Roughly seven years before the launch of the Z Mount, Nikon released an interchangeable-lens system with a tiny 1-inch sensor. Even the Micro Four Thirds crowd was like: “Say what!?”
The upside was that the Nikon 1 system really was compact. I’m guilty of calling all sorts of cameras compact, because they’re small for their class. But what I would actually define as a compact camera is a very small, fixed-lens device. However, if ever there were an interchangeable system that could be dubbed a compact camera, it would be the Nikon 1 system. During its less-than, seven-year lifespan, the 1 system spawned a modest collection of 13 Nikon-branded lenses and 11 cameras. And they were all tiny.
