What is the difference betwen optical zoom and digital zoom?How far in distance can you see w/ a 30x optical?

Question

Also, what's the highest optical zoom?

Answer 1

An optical zoom uses the camera lenses to zoom in (like a telescope), preserving the quality of the image. The digital zoom takes part of the picture and stretches it to fit the camera view, losing quality the more you zoom. Generally, the digital zoom is useless as the image gets too blurry to benefit from the increased range.

30x simply means the zoom is thirty times farther than an unaided view.

Answer 2

30x is pretty good for a camcorder, with digital zoom, the closer you zoom the more blurry it will become. It will focus using the optical zoom.