Wat is the difference between optical zoom and digital zoom?

Answer 1

optical zoom is where the group of lenses in the camera move to bring far objects look closer. no image quality is compromised

digital zoom is software interpolation, and create a zoom effect. so the quality of your picture decreases if you use digital zoom.

Answer 2

Optical zoom- Think of binoculars, how they make images far away look very close up. This is really what you want to look for, because even very close up, whatever you're looking at looks the same (only closer). You don't lose any picture quality with an optical zoom. When buying a digital camera, optical zoom is what you want to look for

Digital zoom- Honestly, pretty pointless, IMO. What it does is enlarge the pixels, to make farther objects look closer, but it distorts the image. With the larger pixels, people end up looking like a Super Mario Bros 1 character (all blocky and pixellated). I think companies like to do this to mislead the consumer- "We have a 500x digital zoom!" Big whoop.

Also, be aware that companies advertise a "combined" or "total" zoom, which can also mislead. A camera advertised as a "combined 12x zoom" can mean a 2x optical zoom, and a 6x digital zoom, which isn't really spectacular at all. For an obvious beginner, I would suggest a camera that has at least 3x or 4x OPTICAL zoom. You can find them at reasonable prices on TigerDirect.com. Check it out.

Answer 3

Optical zoom uses a lens and focal length to zoom in the picture. Digital zoom is artificially created by the computer in the camera.

Think of it this way - optical zoom actually brings in more information to the camera and therefore will create a high quality picture, while digital zoom is just interpolating with the information that is there to make the picture easier for you to see, and there is no additional information to the camera, so the picture will be lower quality.

If zooming is necessary for you, buy optical zoom even though it's more expensive.

Answer 4

Optical zoom actually uses the lens to zoom in to the scene. digital zoom zooms into the digital image. That's pretty much the same as taking a wide view picture and then cropping out the part you don't want after the fact. You lose a lot of resolution by using digital zoom.

Answer 5

Optical Zoom means that you manually have to move a lens, even if the camera does it for you (auto zoom, auto focus)

Digital zoom means that the camera has an "on board" computer that digitally zooms the current picture that is located on the view screen of the camera.

Example: on your computer when you are looking at a picture you can use the magnifying glass to get a closer look at something...that is a digital zoom.

hope that helps

Answer 6

Optical zoom uses a lens to enlarge the view, and maintains the basic resolution of the camera - digital zoom uses fewer of the pixels to imitate zoom, but at a reduced resoltutionj. It's like zooming in on an image on your computer screen.

Answer 7

Optical zoom uses the cameras optics to zoom were as the cameras processor enlarges the image resulting in poorer quality of the image. If buying a digital camera spend as much money as you can afford on one that has a larger optical zoom.

Answer 8

optical zoom is through a lense and will actually zoom in and maintaine the resolution

Digital Zoom is where the camera just blows up the image and you will lose resolution so the image won't be as good quality

Most camera offer both so when you have zoomed in as far as you can with the lense (optical) it will then zoom further digitally

Answer 9

Optical zoom is where the lens zooms in and out on the camera to get closer / further away from an object

Digital zoom, can only zoom in and out on the picture you take, so you are zooming in and out of the picture.

Does that make sense?

So basically optical zoom is better as you can magnify pictures on your PC once you have taken them.

Answer 10

Optical zoom is done by the lens, it gives the best picture. Digital zoom is done by the computer within the camera. It just takes the image and enlarges it based on the pixels it has captured.