Nikon Coolpix P310 First Impressions Review

Modes Overview

The P310 features a hardware mode dial with options for all four "PASM" shooting modes, as well as a fully customizable mode that stores user settings, a dedicated Scene mode setting, and even a dedicated picture effects mode. For beginners, a fully automatic "green" mode has also been included.

Auto Mode

Movie Mode

This is a 1080p video device but a number of other resolutions are available too, including 720p and iFrame formats. All video clips are stored in H.264 and captured at 30 frames per second.

Drive/Burst Mode

Burst mode maxes out a 7 frames per second for 5 shots, which is a step down from the P300 in both speed and buffer size. That's no surprise, given the upgrade to resolution, and should be sufficient for many shooting scenarios. The P310 also offers high speed video capture at up to 120 frames per second, though this will severely limit resolution.

Playback Mode

Picture Quality & Size Options

Maximum resolution is 4608 x 3456 pixels however, unlike the competitive PowerShot S100, lossless RAW encoding is not supported.