What is Optical Zoom and What is Digital Zoom?
This is one of the most commonly misunderstood concepts of digital cameras. Many manufacturers try to cash in on the misconceptions that exist regarding zoom. To many of you a zoom is a zoom. What can be so different in an optical and digital zoom? ‘An optical zoom is good, but at the same time almost everything is going digital today, so a digital zoom should be really good too’ is what most would think. Totally wrong. The concept of optical and digital zoom can be explained in a simple way. With an optical zoom you can actually get closer to the object without losing any image clarity. In an optical zoom the lenses move to magnify the subject. A digital zoom will not zoom onto the subject to maintain clarity, but instead it just magnifies the pixels present to give you a larger image. Using a digital zoom breaks the image giving it a hazy look. As far as possible never use the digital zoom of your camera. Almost all cameras today have got a setting where you can either turn on or off
