Can someone tell me what is the significance of Optical Zoom in digital cameras?

Answer 1

The optical zoom is the real zoom. This zoom is attained by moving the lenses around, to get a clearer picture.

Digital zoom is not technically zoom. What digital zoom does is it takes the image that the optical zoom gets, and it 'zooms' in on the picture. This is like using photoshop, or even MS paint on a large image, and clicking the magnifier glass. It just crops away everything else.

What does this mean? Well, the more you zoom in on digital zoom, the lower quality you'll get. Whereas, the only complication with optical zoom is you might have shaky hands.

Answer 2

There are two types of zoomings done within the digital camera itself.

1. Optical zoom: This is the zoom that's done by the camera optics itself. Your images will get nearer without any loss of quality (again it's dependent on the lens maker). It's akin to the zoomings done with a film based camera.

2. Digital zoom: This is the zoom that's done in-camera, not by the camera optics but by the camera,s electronics. If your camera does not have digital zoom, you can get a same enlargement of an image by using any photo editor. This will tax into your photo qualty (the bigger, the worse).

Answer 3

I agree with MONO - optical zoom is what zoom lens do and the image is as good as the lens/camera combo is capable of. Digital zoom, on the other hand, is like looking at the picture you just took through a magnifying glass. Hence any grain etc. is also magnified.