Nikon Coolpix P510 review: Nikon Coolpix P510

For those after the absolute longest lens on a compact camera, meet the Nikon Coolpix P510. At roughly the same size as Nikon's last full-size megazoom, the 36x 22.5-810mm P500, the P510 packs an "oh wow"-inducing 42x 24-1,000mm lens.

7.8

Nikon Coolpix P510

$112 at Amazon

The Good

The <b>Nikon Coolpix P510</b> is a fun camera to shoot with, overflowing with photo and movie features, and backed by very fast shooting performance and excellent low-ISO photo quality.

The Bad

The P510 has trouble focusing at the telephoto end and its low-light/high-ISO photo quality has room for improvement. Also, the camera feels cheaply constructed.

The Bottom Line

The Nikon Coolpix P510 is easy to recommend for its features, photos, and performance, but the usefulness of a 42x zoom lens is debatable.

The thing is, there are not a lot of things you can do with a lens that long on what's essentially a point-and-shoot camera. With the lens fully extended, it's very difficult to hold the P510 still and keep your subject framed, and the autofocus is very slow, so fast-moving targets are a challenge to shoot. Plus, while the image stabilization is very good, you're still going to want it on a tripod to avoid blur and using its higher ISO settings.

That said, the zoom range does give you a lot of shooting flexibility and the P510 has plenty of other positive attributes that make it worth recommending.

The Nikon Coolpix P510's photo quality is very good to excellent and significantly better than the P500. Now, that doesn't mean it's as good as a digital SLR; pixel peepers might be disappointed by what its shots look like at 100 percent. For the P510's price and features, though, most people should be more than happy with its results.

Sample photos:
Nikon Coolpix P510

At its two lowest ISOs, subjects look sharp with fine detail good enough for large prints up to 11.5x15. Things look softer as noise reduction increases as you go up in sensitivity, but it isn't until you reach ISO 800 that subjects lose significant detail and look a little smeary at smaller sizes onscreen or in prints.

ISO 1600 is OK for Web use, but colors look muddy. The highest sensitivities -- ISO 3200 and ISO 6400 -- really aren't usable. That's unfortunate because once this camera's lens is fully extended, they would be helpful. (Read more about the P510's photo capabilities in the sample photo slideshow.)

Video quality is pretty good, certainly good enough for Web use and nondiscriminating TV viewing. Panning the camera will create some judder and I noticed trailing behind fast-moving subjects, but that's typical of the video from most compact cameras. The zoom lens does function while recording, but you will hear the motor in your clips as you use it. However, a bigger issue is the camera's slow autofocus. In fact, there were times when I extended the lens and it never focused.

The P510 has a great mix of shooting modes, making it a good choice for both snapshooters and those who want more control. There are two Auto modes on this camera. One is Nikon's Scene Auto Selector, located in with the other Scene modes. It adjusts settings appropriately based on six common scene types. If the scene doesn't match any of those, it defaults to a general-use Auto. Then there is an Auto mode, which shuts off all photo settings from the user except for image quality and size.

Outside of the Scene Auto Selector there are 16 other scene modes, such as Landscape and Portrait as well as a Pet Portrait mode that will automatically shoot when it detects a cat or dog face, as well as two panorama modes: Easy and Panorama Assist. The latter uses a ghost image on the screen to help you line up your successive photos. The former just requires you to press the shutter and pan the camera left, right, up, or down to create a panorama in camera. These modes never handle movement well, so they're best used on scenery without movement in it. Nikon also added a simple 3D photo mode. It works like the Panorama Assist mode; you take one shot, and move the camera slightly to the right, and it fires off a second shot and combines them into one MPO file for viewing on a 3D display.

The P510 has shooting modes from full auto to full manual.

If you want to do more than just point and shoot, Nikon includes Program, Aperture-priority, Shutter-speed-priority, and Manual modes on the P510. Shutter speeds are adjustable from 8 seconds to 1/4,000 of a second. Apertures at the wide end go from f3.0 to f8.3 with a total of 10 stops. The telephoto end has just four stops: f5.9, f6.6, f7.4, and f8.3. Beyond aperture and shutter speed, Nikon includes manual adjustments for noise reduction, sharpening, contrast, and saturation, color filters and toning for monochrome photos, and things like exposure bracketing and flash exposure compensation. And if you come up with a set you like, you can store them in the Custom mode for easy recall.

The P510, in general, is a fast-shooting camera. From off to first shot is barely more than a second, and shot-to-shot times both with and without flash are about 1.7 seconds. If you need to shoot faster, the camera's high-speed burst will capture at 6.5 frames per second at full resolution for up to five frames. Other continuous-shooting options include a low-speed full-resolution burst capable of 1fps for up to 30 frames and 120fps and 60fps bursts that capture up to 60 shots at VGA and 1-megapixel resolution, respectively.

Shutter lag -- the time it takes from pressing the shutter release to capture without prefocusing -- is 0.4 second in good lighting and 0.7 second in dimmer conditions. However, once you start extending the lens, the camera takes longer to focus. Once you get out to the 1,000mm position, it can be very slow to focus. On occasion, when in the burst mode, it would capture before it could focus. This isn't unusual, just something to be aware of if you're going to shoot fast-moving subjects at the telephoto end of the lens.

Though it's large and comfortable to use, it doesn't make steadying the 42x zoom lens any easier.

The body design has barely changed from the P500. The camera is amazingly compact considering the lens. And the lens is really the bulk of the weight, which makes the rest of the body feel lightweight and cheaply constructed. However, the right-hand grip is deep and comfortable with a textured rubber piece on front and the large lens barrel gives you ample space to hold and steady the camera with your left hand. The controls are comfortably placed and responsive.

There's a small, but decent, electronic viewfinder (EVF) and a vari-angle LCD for framing up your shots. The LCD pulls out from the body and can be tilted up or down, but it does not swing out horizontally from the body and rotate. Like all LCDs and EVFs, the screen blanks out for a second once you've taken a shot, but it's reasonably fast to recover. To the left of the EVF are a diopter adjustment dial and a button for switching between the LCD and EVF. To its right are a Display button for changing what information is viewed on the displays and a movie record button.

The P510's controls are spaced and laid out well.

The rest of the controls haven't changed from the P500 (it's a pretty standard digital camera control layout). There is a rocker switch on the lens barrel for controlling the lens. It can be used to zoom in and out (handy when shooting movies), snap the lens back a bit in telephoto should your subject move out of frame, or for manual focus. The only other change is a programmable function button just behind the shutter release; its default is for changing continuous-shooting modes, but can be set for ISO, white balance, metering, AF area mode, color mode, or image size.

The battery compartment and card slot are under a door on the bottom. The battery life is decent for this camera, but using the wall adapter takes more than 4 hours to fully charge the battery from zero. If a typical day of shooting will include the high-speed burst modes and movie capture and using the 3-inch LCD and the zoom a lot, you'll want a backup battery.

Outputs are under a cover on the body's right side; you get a Mini-HDMI and a Micro-USB/AV port. There's no accessory shoe for an add-on flash, limiting you to the onboard pop-up one. It doesn't automatically rise when needed, remaining off until you push a button on the left side of the camera. It's adequately powerful and there are flash exposure compensation settings available.

Lastly, the P510 has built-in GPS. It's strictly there for geotagging photos, so no fancy maps or anything like that. But it was relatively fast to lock onto a signal, even in the middle of New York surrounded by tall buildings. Nikon wisely gave it its own tab in the menu interface, making it easy to turn it on and off.

Conclusion
I'm still not sure there's a good reason to have a 42x zoom lens on a compact camera. But, regardless, the Nikon Coopix P510 is overall a very good full-size megazoom even if you never use the full zoom range. And, actually, it's probably better if you don't.

Shooting speed (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Time to first shot

Typical shot-to-shot time

Shutter lag (dim)

Shutter lag (typical)

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ150

1.9 

1 

0.8 

0.3 

Nikon Coolpix P500

1.1 

1.4 

0.6 

0.3 

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX100V

2 

1.5 

0.6 

0.3 

Nikon Coolpix P510

1.1 

1.6 

0.7 

0.4 

Canon PowerShot SX40 HS

1.6 

2.5 

0.6 

0.4 

Find out more about how we test digital cameras.