Nikon Unveils Its First Mirrorless Cameras

The whole system appears to be a piece of junk and should be avoided at all costs.

The "upgrader" from point and shoots that they are aiming this at are going to still say it's too big to be useful for pocket shooting.
The DSLR enthusiast looking for a smaller camera for walkabout is going to be much better serviced by Micro Four Thirds and especially Sony NEX (I have the 5N now and and a 7 on preorder)
Those looking for a Leica like experience are similarly going to be better serviced by the Olympus EP3 or the NEX-7
DSLR video enthusiasts.... Just move along nothing to see here.

The 2.7x crop factor sensor is the dumbest thing ever. A 10mm lens becomes 27mm which effectively means you will never get a true wide lens in this system and it doesn't even have the slick drag across the horizon panorama feature that Sony has to make up for it.

No 24p. Duh.

Fail, fail, fail.
Fail.

I'm not a marketing person, but I do not get this premise. I would think that the type of people looking for a fully automatic point and shoot would not want to deal with changing lenses. And as Sam points out, that smaller sensor is not going to attract the dSLR user looking for something more compact.

I still think a compact dSLR with a standard view prime lens -- 28mm or 30mm -- offers a much better solution for the enthusiast looking for a small, lightweight camera to carry around.

I got to play with the Nikon V1 and J1 at the NJ Camera Show today. They both sucked so hard.

It really is impossible to even remotely come close to a wide angle of view with them.
They are heavier than they look.
There is NO GRIP and NO WAY TO COMFORTABLY HOLD THEM
They are WAY TOO THICK. Even with their size advantage over the sony's no way you pocket them (unless you are wearing cargo pants like Hanson does with his tablet =p hehe) Shirt pocket is right out tho.
They were more unbalanced than even last year's NEX-3.
The shutter lag was noticeably worse than a DSLR (yes, these are pre-production, this at least might change)
The LCDs were already smudged and obviously are non articulating. Cheekprints as well as fingers.
The viewfinder on the V1 was clearly not in the same league as the new sony one.

The 10mm pancake was nice until I noticed THEY HAVE A FAKE MANUAL FOCUS RING. It was like "suckkkkkkkkkerrrr!"

I predict total failure.

I also got to try the unreleased Sony NEX-7, and it's even more amazing than I had hoped. Tried it with the $1k 24mm which seemed nice but the 35mm Macro BLEW ME AWAY. I wish I could have taken shots home with me on a card to evaluate but it was light, sharp as hell on the lcd (i know, I know), and fast. I'm ordering the 35 right now and can't wait for the Nex7.

As a Nikon DSLR fan this really pains me. But they totally blew it. I blame myself for putting too much stock in them to have done something that existing users would appreciate. Silly rabbit, revolutions only come from outsides, not the incumbents (unless you are Apple)

This article nails it:
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2011/09/micro-43-is-the-big-kahuna.html

For me personally the Sony has nailed my needs, but I agree that Micro Four Thirds is going to continue to dominate this new part of photography sooner rather than later. But it's what he says about waiting for Guffman (er Nikon/Canon) to show up and win that is dead on.