The P310 is the successor to the COOLPIX P300, which last year established a new branch of compact, wide-angle zoom cameras in the COOLPIX P series. It is equipped with a lens offering the same fast maximum aperture of f/1.8 that was so popular with the P300, and exhibits a number of advances, including even better image quality from its 16.1-million pixel image sensor and a lens-shift vibration reduction (VR) function for camera shake compensation equivalent to a four-step increase in shutter speed.

Nikon P310 is also equipped with a backside illumination CMOS sensor with an effective pixel count of 16.1-million pixels for significantly less noise with shooting at high sensitivities. This results in the beautiful images with little noise that users expect, even with shooting in dimly lit surroundings. It also offers a noise reduction burst feature that utilizes automatic image overlay technology, which is applied with shooting in Night Portrait, Backlighting, and Night Landscape scene modes, to produce images with minimal noise.

It is also equipped with a number of other shooting and editing functions, including COOLPIX Picture Control, which can be used to adjust the vividness of colors or degree of sharpening applied to images prior to shooting according to the type of subject or scene, shooting conditions, or intent. What's more, frequently used shooting menu items can easily be assigned to the new customizable function button, making the full-scale photographic capabilities demanded by users even more simple.