The shiny exterior hides a number of flaws, however, and when shooting they begin to show through. This is not to say it’s all bad news, so we’ll start with the positives.

For starters you have Nikon’s latest processor, the EXPEED 3. This is faster and works hard to reduce image defects such as noise. It has a quick continuous shooting speed (using the electronic shutter) of up 10, 30, or 60fps at full resolution.

Along with Motion Snapshot mode, which shoots stills while capturing a short movie clip, it’s hard to miss a moment as the scene unfolds.

The issue of noise has been successfully addressed, with ISO ratings going as low as 100 and up to 3,200. The maximum ISO setting can be set in order to limit the extent of noise.

You have a choice of Nikon 1 NIKKOR lenses to shoot with, but as the J1 has no built-in vibration reduction (VR), you’ll have to be wary of blurry images when using the non-VR 10mm pancake lens.

Manual focusing is an option using the menu. Unfortunately the lenses come without a focusing ring, which will seem disappointing if you’re after that full DSLR experience minus the bulk.

The build quality of the camera feels solid, though is not as light and compact as you may first expect from simply looking at it; the camera’s weighty body makes the lens featherlight in comparison.

The pop-up flash shoots up using a quick-release switch, but the positioning and height of the flash seems a bit too precarious for our liking.

The Mode dial is seated next to a grip for your thumb, with four featured modes: Movie, Auto, Smart Capture and Motion Snapshot.

The manual options such as aperture and shutter priorities are left tucked inside the menus, though these could be placed in the empty slots on the Mode dial.

Smart Photo Selector is recommended to use with changing scenery, as the camera can go from Macro into landscape mode instantly.

If you’re a beginner, or are looking to step up from standard lightweight compacts, the new Nikon 1 series will tick many of the right boxes. For more experienced photographers, a DSLR, with a wider variety of lenses, will be more to your liking.

Head to Nikon to view a complete list of specifications and where to buy.

Price: RRP £549.99 (body with 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 VR lens)

When a laptop or iPad becomes an essential part of your professional day-to-day routine, digital designers will look for a holdall that signals authority. With the Concrete Mac Hook Case professionalism is a main concern, reflected in its hand-crafted design.

Many may balk at the asking price of this case, but you’re receiving a product that oozes sophistication, produced from authentic Italian leather. It also comes standard with a two-year warranty. This can be extended by a further two years by registering it.

That’s great piece of mind for a product you may cherish as much as your iOS and laptop device. The chrome frame ensures protection as well as impressive ergonomics. Being made from aluminium means it’s both durable and lightweight, with unnoticeable additional weight added when transporting.

The Mac Hook Case’s carabiners conform to an aluminum chrome design and it’s these that allow you the means to wear your case in a variety of fashions. These are fully detachable, and can hook to opposite and adjacent corners, creating horizontal or vertical over the shoulder, or backpack arrangement.

Itemisation is extended in the Mac Hook Case’s style choices, and we’re certain fashion-minded consumers will love the choice of modish colours – available in green grey, antelope brown, charcoal black, and our personal favourite red brown.

Looking at the internal space, we would recommend that this case be used for the more low-profile next-generation machines. There’s enough space to hold your portable device, smartphone and moleskin alone.

Prices start at £149/$199. See more here.

Wacom have re-envisaged the Bamboo tablet product line for new users looking to explore diverse digital expression – inside and out.

Starting with the latter, the new Bamboo Pen & Touch specifically now has a trendy, new age outer shell.

Sporting a high contrast black gloss, carbon and neon green colouring, complemented with blue LED-lit ExpressKeys, it certainly charms aesthetically minded consumers.

The device’s pen has also had a slight modification, now coming with what is described by Wacom as: “a more aesthetic shape due to a new soft grip area”.

It certainly looks and feels a lot more comfortable in use, but no more than previous editions. This is also colour coordinated with the main device.

As always this is complemented with professional standard pen pressure Levels (1024), long-standing two-handed control for left and right-handed users, and multi-gesture operation – a must have with mainstream tablet devices.

The multi-gesture of this device seems more responsive and easier to operate when navigating Photoshop images and the Web, zooming, scrolling and so on.

However, this is perhaps due to this now being a more familiar feature than when first used in previous devices. It could also be a result of the machine being complemented with 64-bit operation.

New additions to the device’s creative arsenal are actually very entertaining. The Bamboo Pen & Touch now comes with its own Apps system called Bamboo Dock, offering expressive applications that enhance your Bamboo experience.

These include production additions such as enhanced note making and creative apps, fun games for downtime and motivational examples such as Mood Tuner – offering tunes to inspire your creativity.

However, be mindful you’re applying to a tight workspace that of course limits application – illustrators, comic artists and retouchers will get most from this tablet.

For more information visit www.wacom.com

OnOne Software continuously sets out to provide photographers with the pre-eminent one-stop-shop for photo editing production, through its Perfect Photo Suite packages, and version six promises even more innovations.

The most notable upgrade in functionality is the software’s enhanced cross-platforming capabilities. Perfect Photo Suite 6 is now ready to use with Photoshop, Lightroom, and Apple’s Aperture.

This means that effects can be further enhanced and creative short cuts can be made to complement workflow.

However, it’s also available as a stand-alone program, offering further new built-in additions. The Perfect Photo Suite 6 interface houses everything you need, recognisable at a glance for previous users.

But even when unfamiliar with tools purposes, simply applying them in real time will mostly lead to instant comprehension.

The suite includes Perfect Portrait 1, Perfect Layers 2, Perfect Effects 3, Perfect Mask 5, Perfect Resize 7, and FocalPoint 2. Retouchers and photo editors will instantly be allured by the first and third examples, seeing significant advancements, with FocalPoint 2 beneficial in the postproduction phase.

Perfect Portrait 1 is operated through easy-to-use sliders. The Smooth control isn’t wholly destructive as with some other plug-ins, in fact operating with a degree of pore structure preservation.

This is far more reliable than the manual effects we’ve seen applied through Photoshop. The Blemishes slider acts almost like makeup foundation. However, Blemishes are best remedied with the tried and trusted Blemish tool, working much like Photoshop’s Clone Stamp tool.

Here, the SkinTune option has also become more operable through utilising sliders. The Warmth slider establishes effects with ranging cold to warm filters, as Color Shift intuitively re-establishes available settings in correspondence to your Warmth values. Throw in the Ethnicity drop options to give you a head start and establishing skin colour is near effortless.

The Facial Features option offers enhanced targeted detail, superior to other portrait effect software. Intuitively recognising eyes, teeth and mouth regions, it boosts sharpness and whitening. Doing this independently leaves more room for play, and less time spent on production with masking and isolating effects in Photoshop.

Perfect Effects 3 gives you a huge library of over 300 effects to choose from, with some favourites retained from previous PhotoTools software. Some are more applicable than others, all are categorised into familiar themes.

But what reinvigorates this option is its live previews of your effect preset – once one is applied to your layer stack, presets transform to show what consequent effects will look like through their additional application.

These are but a few of the more relevant creative additions for photo editors, also including Perfect Layers 2’s new Image Browser, blending modes and layer stack capabilities, Perfect Mask 5’s Keep and Erase tools, which automatically expand your brush stroke to similarly-coloured and textured areas, and FocalPoint 2’s multiple Focus Bugs that define image areas.

Go to www.ononesoftware.com to discover further updates.

The tech world has always been very fond of the notion that great things come in small packages.

With the OptiPlex 990 SFF, Dell is working on the premise that if your desktop computer actually needs a desktop to house it, you’re simply not making smart business decisions.

The SFF appending the OptiPlex 990’s moniker isn’t designed specifically to confound you, it actually stands for Small Form Factor – and small it is.

Sadly the images here don’t really don’t do justice to Dell’s latest creation, since it stands scarcely half the height and depth of today’s most common towers and barely a third of the width.

Despite its diminutive dimensions, it actually has a surprising amount of power. It’s not going to set the world alight with its number crunching capabilities, but with space at its highest premium in decades, it’s very welcome.
Although Dell offers several options as part of their customisation service, the OptiPlex 990 SFF we’re reviewing came complete with the cutting-edge Intel Core i7-2600, meaning there was very little digital design rendering it couldn’t handle.

This eight-core processor packs an incredible punch at 3.4GHz per core, making it more than capable of coping with the demands of massive file sizes for both still and animated work.

Though it boasts 4GB of high-speed DDR3 memory, Dell pre-install the 32-bit version of Windows 7 on the OptiPlex 990 SFF, meaning only 3.15GB of memory is actually available to the system. It’s an unfortunate and needless oversight, but one easily fixed by ensuring the 64-bit version of Windows is pre-installed for you.

Though the 250GB hard drive might not meet your expectations either, for the price of a DVD movie you can double that to 500GB during the purchase process, which we’d highly recommend.

Connectivity is usually an area where small form factor computers fall short. You can find a grand total of 10 USB 2.0 ports – six at the rear and four on the front plate – on offer here.

This did take us by surprise, but we’d have been happier to see fewer of these in favour of at least a Firewire port or a couple of USB 3.0s. That said, there are two PCI-Express upgrade ports within the system, so both USB and Firewire upgrades can be appended later should they be needed.

You may, however, prefer to save the 16x PCI-Express slot hiding behind the case cover for a graphics upgrade. Since the system as it stands relies entirely on Intel’s integrated HD graphics capabilities, you won’t be able to utilise GPU acceleration without a modern graphics card.

Though you’re limited to less powerful, low-profile versions of modern graphics cards from NVIDIA and AMD, they’ll still give your Photoshop work a welcome speed boost.

For more information visit the Dell website.

Dell Vostro V131 is classed as a laptop, but looks suspiciously like a notebook in size and build.

Regardless, this mobile computer with a full-sized keyboard and flip-up monitor is at the top of its game – as we’ve come to expect from Dell products.

The absence of an internal DVD-ROM or DVD-RW drive doesn’t seem to stop it providing a full HD 1,366 x 768 LED Display, with the always useful addition of anti-glare technology, making usage suitable in all lighting environments.

USB 3.0 (x2) and USB 2.0 ports mean external devices sync fast and easy. The 8 in 1 card reader makes photo sharing simple and accessible.

Integrated modem and network connection are accessed through rapid Bluetooth v3.0 and High Speed technology, making it easy to Skype, email and video-call wirelessly.

This all makes the Vostro V131 a highly advantageous model for an on the go user. The machines low profile reinforces this.

The Vostro V131’s slim design is matched with a slick professional look, sporting a black and silver shell with a blue backlit keyboard.

This not only looks cool but also improves type capabilities in low light settings, great when you’re working those late hours.

A finger print reader on the front of the shell is a nice touch – complementing an already futuristic design and making sure that your project files are safe at all times.

The Vostro V131 guts include up to second-gen Intel Core i5 processor and up to 500GB SATA hard drive, which make it a reliable workstation in a small studio.

This also ensures 64-bit capability and robust processing power, which is great when creating motion and hi-res projects in Photoshop and other animation-based software.

The Vostro V131 is totally suited to small design businesses that need security, reliability and service; used as a primary or secondary multi-media unit.

For more iformation visit www.dell.com

The Cintiq 24HD is the largest that Wacom currently has to offer but does bigger necessarily mean better? In this case you better believe it!

The Cintiq 24HD has come a long way since its predecessor – the Cintiq 21UX. That model was pretty big, but Wacom has clearly been listening to user needs.

Appreciating that the delineation of a screen is of utmost importance to the digital creative, Wacom has excelled in providing a 16:10 aspect ratio, 1,920 x 1,200 HD display with an impressive 178-degree viewing angle.

With professionals operating in the entertainment industries mostly working on widescreen displays, 21-inches just doesn’t quite cut it these days and they need higher resolution, which this tablet addresses.

This monster of a device weighs in at 40KG, however it’s extremely agile when situated. Sacrificing the rotation of the 21UX, as it’s true most professionals tend to use rotation in their software rather than hardware, the new ergonomic stand allows users to manipulate this device through beautiful die-cast arms.

The device looks to maximise your comfort when in use, being able to stably perch on the edge of any desk and permitting you to work in-lap. It can also be folded to a flat position just two centimetres off the desk – a far cry from what the 21UX could manage.

Further improvements include a hardened glass plate with anti-glare, so you can work in well-lit areas. The screen has even been designed to be removable in the event of scratch emergencies, which keeps maintenance costs low.

New controls are integrated onto the screen display, meaning fewer but larger keys for quicker shortcut operation. The power switch and LED lights are now hidden cleverly behind the screen – something that sufferers of the sticky-tape-over-the-lights scenario with the 21UX, to black out pesky light interference, will appreciate.

One possible disappointment is that the pen technology is comparable with the Intuos 4. You would expect a machine this big to perhaps upgrade this technology.

However, rest assured this is the highest level Wacom have available, so you’re not strictly getting short changed – It features 2,048 pressure levels and minimised activation force of less than one gram.

The Cintiq 24HD also shows innovation with built-in pipes to manage heat with a small internal fan. So it’s comfortable and you’ll feel right at home with it on your desk, with enough room for your keyboard to fit snug under the display.

Priced at around £150 higher than the 21UX, it’s hard to find reasons not to see this technical feat as value for the money.

It’s pricey but it’s beautiful and will undoubtedly delight digital and matt painters using Photoshop in the entertainment industries and larger studios.

For more informaton visit www.wacom.com

The G-Drive slim is a super-sleek portable storage device that holds a mammoth 500GB amount of memory for such a modest size.

This only makes it more attractive to design-minded modern consumers, as do its aesthetic qualities – the aluminium-grade case is a mere 9.9mm (0.4”) thick. 82mm width by 128.5mm length means it just about fits in your pocket, and is easily portable at around five ounces in weight.

It’s easy to see how it utterly complements its intended host – the MacBook Air/Pro, or perhaps even iPad users (in possession of an Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit).

The drive is also programmed for accessibility, which will again please Apple product users who need to just plug in and get downloading with their files.

You can plug and play instantly on Mac OS X and sync directly to Time Machine. It’s also very capable of quick data transfer, with its 2.0 USB connection and Hitachi 5400 RPM hard drive.

A 1GB file uploaded in around five seconds, and a copied file in just a few seconds more!

One glaring omission is FireWire connectability. Competitors such as the Iomega eGo Mac Edition 500GB do have this, and many will appreciate it as a faster means of transferring data, working your hard drive less.

Another possible issue could be the Hitachi 5400 RPM hard drive itself – likely prone to overheating after extended use, due to the lack of a fan and expected generation of heat.

However, at 16p per gigabyte, the G-Drive slim matches performance with price and isn’t that bad a deal in comparison with rival devices. Again, such as the Iomega eGo Mac Edition 500GB, which can’t match its modish design and costs more in UK sterling (and in US dollars depending on the supplier).

As promised, the G-Drive slim keeps its promise of being a design-savvy, media-conscious and highly mobile device.

Just Mobile has a reputation for producing well-made, stylish accessories for your iPhone and iPad – their Horizon wall mount is no exception. This solid slab of aluminium has been milled to perfection and the result is something you can trust to hold your iPad up on the wall.

There’s a little bit of DIY involved when it comes to getting the unit up and running, and although screws and raw plugs are included, you’ll need a power drill and screwdriver to ensure a perfect installation.

The Horizon comes in two parts, one of which slides onto the plate you’ve just screwed into your wall, hiding all of the mountings, which creates a minimalist design creatives will love. Also included are two rubber inserts – one for the original iPad and one for the iPad 2, to ensure your device has a snug fit whichever generation you’re in posession of.

As you’d expect from Just Mobile, there’s a huge focus on aesthetics and they’ve definitely got it right. The aluminium perfectly complements the iPad and the mount itself has a slim profile, so it doesn’t look hugely out of place once it’s all installed.

To top it off, Just Mobile have ensured there’s full access to the dock connector for charging and syncing, and have included a small push button on the front of the mount that presses the home screen button. Whether you’re looking to save some space, use as a mounted playlist, or show off art or photos in a makeshift digital frame, mounting your iPad on the wall has never been easier or sexier.

iClone is a quick and easy to use visualisation tool enabling you to create complicated character animation without all the usual messing about with key frames and 3D modelling software.

Its rendering acts in real-time, so images are realised at around the visual level of most videogames, but its streamlined interface means it leaves out many tools professional animators will find indispensable. That said, by treating animation and character modelling a bit like Lego, it can very quickly build up and edit full scenes.

Version 5 includes a raft of new features. Users can now add rigid and soft-body dynamics to any objects in your scene. You can give objects weight, friction and elasticity that behave just as they would in real life – falling to the ground, bouncing and falling over when hit. If you define the objects as soft bodies, they’ll deform and bend as though made of rubber or cloth.

iClone’s physics simulation is easy to set up and works reasonably well. It’s the fastest way to give objects in your scene realistic motion, but you’ll need to play around with the settings to get exact results.

Character animation has been made even simpler with Body Puppeting options, offering the ability to quickly lay down animation tracks for any body part, just by moving the mouse around.

There’s also a new Mixmoves system providing animations for everyday movements like standing up, sitting down and moving around. These can be blended seamlessly together to create more complex sequences.

iClone’s new rendering tools enable you to give your scenes a hand-drawn, cartoon look. You can edit the colouration of your objects and the black lines around these in this view, giving a basic level of control over the whole effect.

However, you can also add colour tints, blurs and lighting effects – all of which can be combined in Photoshop-style layers, helping to understand and build quite complex looks from the ground up – getting away from the severe videogame appearances of previous iClone animations.

If you spend an extra £79 ($99) you can add motion capture to the iClone5 feature list with the Mocap plug-in. You need to own a Kinect for Xbox you can use its camera (mounted on top of your computer) to record animation by capturing their own movements and applying them to characters.

These movements can be saved to a library for later use and the results, considering the present limitations of Kinect motion capture, are fairly impressive.

In short, iClone5 is a very fast way to get storytelling animations done, but those animations are limited in their quality. You can only export them as video or still images, not as animated 3D assets, so you can’t currently integrate the package into more professional pipelines – although an update to 3DXchange due early this year looks likely to change this.