I haven't been on the forum lately but I've been kayaking,(biking & hiking) photographing, home shopping, home buying.... well, anyway. Jumped back on the forum because I'm selling a boat and need to see if there were any competing Tiderace offerings here, looking to buy a boat too, then noticed this thread was still active.
There's plenty of evidence that the whole Nikon 1 System is pretty capable. Windancer provided a couple of descent links to pages which pour over the camera. It's also evident that Nikon intends to continue the lineup. The upcoming 1 J5 looks very promising and they can't keep that stellar new 70-300cx lens (189-810mm equivalent) in stock, where I buy my gear. Note that neither of those are waterproof however.
The submersible 1AW1 functions and produces images in the same way that the rest of the 1 series bodies do, aside from minor differences. Here's a look at what can be done with within the system:
https://www.flickr.com/search/?tags=nikon1&view_all=1
And here are just a few of mine(certainly not my best as I just grabbed a few quickly), and each of these would have challenged many cameras. The sensors that Nikon uses today allow a lot of shadow detail to be pulled up and the cameras seem to do very well to avoid blowing the highlights without a lot of input from the user, within the auto modes.
In camera panorama across several stops of exposure. My camera phone, which can produce stellar pano shots under ideal conditions would have blown the highlights here. Ridiculously small here but rest assured that the 4800x920 original show plenty of detail, throughout.
High ISO performance? Here's a shot taken in a dark, window-less hangar at 3200 ISO, with the waterproof flash. Most of the time I have no need to go beyond 400 ISO but obviously will if required. I like to leave the camera on 160 or 200 usually. I also leave my Nikon D810 at ISO 64 most of the time. With the D810 I can actually shoot holding back over 5 stops of exposure, resulting in a completely black image out of camera, and then pull out a noise-free image in post. Can't push the 1 AW1 as much but it's going to have more latitude than many cameras in its size.
Back to the water.
I've taken the 1 AW1 on about nine trips and even on landlocked vacations when the weather was looking bad. Just came back from Colorado after a family retreat in the mountains where we had six inches of snow and some rain. I was shooting action video of family in sleet and rain, and also came away with the best family group shot of the bunch. The cameras I didn't bring on that trip are the Sony RX100, Nikon D610 and D810.
Of course the 1 AW1 isn't perfect. There's no EVF, if that matters to you. I don't go out without a spare battery but it seems that every mirrorless camera is in that same boat. Still just two waterproof lenses but I'm very happy with the results the one lens I have gives me. It's also exactly two more waterproof lenses than the competition.
I've made the habit of submersing this camera each time I go kayaking and it's very nice to simply not worry about it. Dragged it in the water one time just for fun. Video seems to be excellent as well as audio but my only comparison there is to my GoPro.
How to keep spots off the lens? Rain X.
