Nikon Coolpix P510 Digital Camera Review

Speed and Timing

Like most higher-end superzooms today, the P510 is built around a backside-illuminated CMOS sensor, which affords speedy burst shooting and short shot-to-shot times (among other benefits).

Two full-res burst modes are available, Continuous H and Continuous L. The slower setting is more of a true continuous mode, able to sustain shooting indefinitely as far as we could tell, while the quicker setting takes five shots in rapid succession, then stop while the photos get saved to the memory card.

A handful of other burst modes are available, including 120fps and 60fps modes (at reduced resolution, of course), a best-shot selector, and a pre-shooting cache mode.

We clocked the P510 at a respectable 5.22 frames per second. As we mentioned, the camera is completely incapacitated for a few seconds after that five-shot burst (and our test measures the speed over five shots, lucky for this camera).

As speedy as it seems, it's actually the slowest of all the top-tier superzooms—not by a wide margin, but its competitors from Sony, Canon, and Panasonic are all quicker, and even its predecessor, the P500, was faster.

The P510 has a pretty standard self-timer: 2 seconds, 10 seconds, and a smile detector. It also has an interval timer for time-lapse photography. Available intervals are 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, and 10 minutes.

Focus Speed

In good lighting, at the wide end of the focal range, focus is as quick as we'd hope for out of a superzoom. It slows down notably in dimmer lighting, and especially as the focal length extends. But generally, it's quick and accurate.