OT camera question.

smprfi

What is the difference between optical zoom and digital zoom?

AbesNeighbor

OPtical is "Using the glass" Digital is electronics. Optical is best. Digital shows artifacts.

dorkkarl

"digital" is kind of like "faked" zoom, right? kinda like "artificial-zooming"?

K S

Lakesammman

Is AZ as hard as AT to detect??

LanLord

What the replies have stated are pretty much correct. If I can put it into plainer terms (I hope).

A digital picture (even a film picture) is made up of tiny specs of color and shading information. In digital, it's called a pixel, in film it's called grain. If you use glass to magnify the image, it's larger when it hits the pixel or grain and therefore you can magnify it some without loss of definition. In a digital zoom (something I don't think any film camera has) you are using the image already in pixel form and asking the cameras microprocessor to enlarge it. The pixel is going to get larger and you begin to get blotches as a result.

Optical zoom is by far a better way to go.

You effectively let your computer perform a digital zoom when you crop and resize a picture for posting to a website or if you click on the little magnifying glass that some applications have that enlarges an image.

nwcs

The simplest way to explain it is that when you have an optical zoom, there is little distortion of the subject. A digital zoom makes guesses in magnifying the image that lead to increasing distortion as the power of magnification grows larger.

smprfi

Thank you.

airplanenut

Optical- Real zoom... the stronger the lens, the higher the zoom...
Digital- "Fake" Zoom... it sees the image, then decides what it would look like if it were bigger... open an image, then double it's size... that is what a digital zoom would do.

Jeremy