Okay, so for a 6 or 7 megapixel camera-what would be the best optical zoom #? Optical zoom is far more important than the digital zoom.
Optical is the physical lens moving in on a picture.
Digital zoom is a computer generated zoom; however, the more you zoom in, the more pixelated your picture becomes. Your photo will look like you zoomed in too close that you begin to see pixels (blocks of color) rather than the picture.
A good photographer rarely, if ever, uses digital zoom. Optical zoom is better Without a doubt the optical zoom is much more important than digital zoom. definitly the optical zoom....it's the real zoom....not the digital which is simply as u cropping image via photoshop. I think Optical Zoom is better and I'd recommend the Sony Cybershot W35 7.2MP Digital Camera . Here's an article that explains the difference between optical & digital zoom and why optical zoom is better:
http://www.dpreview.com/learn/?/Glossary...
for typical point & shoot (compact) digital cameras, most come with at least a 3x zoom lens... but if you're willing to carry a bigger/heavier camera around, you can get up to an 18x zoom lens. http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/compare_... Definitely optical zoom is more important.
Digital zoom is useless because it simply scales up the pixels. Optical zoom! Your using the camera's physical lens to do the zooming. Digital zoom is just that, digital.The chip kinda guesses what to do with pixels and 'scales them up'. Digital zoom will look very pixilated when viewing the picture in a normal to large size. Another added bonus for a camera to have is image stabilization. Combine optical zoom with IS and your set. Optical zoom is good and digital zoom sucks. Optical zoom is "real" zoom done with the camera lens. Digital zoom is really just a way to enlarge pixels and degrade the image. Ignore it completely when you are comparing cameras.
Here are three sample pictures taken with my Canon Powershot SD900, which is a 10.0 megapixel camera. All three pictures are taken with the optical zoom maxed out at 3X or 23.1 mm, which is the equivalent of 111.6 mm after calculating for the lens crop factor. There is no image processing at all done with any of these pictures. All were taken using the self-timer to (hopefully) eliminate camera shake as the camera sat on the top of my car. (Okay, I'll use a tripod next time, but I think they are pretty sharp images.) Please click on "View All Sizes" and then view each image at the largest size available, which should be 3648 x 2736 pixels. The first picture (3xOpticalFull) is the full frame image at 3x optical zoom, or 111 mm. The second picture (4xDigitalFull) is the result of zooming out the additional 4x in digital zoom, for an equivalent of 444 mm. The third picture (3xOpticalCrop) is actually a cropped version of the original image, maintaining the full pixel dimension. In other words, I accomplished the "digital zoom" entirely in the computer and not in the camera. If you compare the full-sized images, I think it is immediately obvious that the third picture is far superior in any aspect that you care to examine. I think it is much sharper (Check the tower and the antenna up near the top of the frame.), has better color, and less digital noise and artifact (Check the plain sky and the shadows on the building.). These images are all tagged "digital zoom."
3xOpticalFull: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7189769@N04...
4xDigitalFull: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7189769@N04...
3xOpticalCrop: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7189769@N04...
In other words, please ignore any claims of superiority based on "digital zoom" when you choose your camera. It is only "in camera cropping" and it is not anywhere near as good as "in computer cropping." Any attempts at cropping a digitally-zoomed picture will be a waste of time.
It's hard to say what the "best" optical zoom is. Try to look at the "equivalent" focal length of the lens. This term levels the playing field for you so you can actually know what you are getting.
An 18-55 zoom is a 3X zoom. A 70-210 zoom is also a 3X zoom. How can this be? You know that a 200 mm lens wold give you a much larger image than a 55 mm lens, right? The thing is, with a non-SLR camera, we tend to almost never pay attention to the focal length of the lens. It would be incredibly confusing if we tried to anyway! Image magnification is a direct function of the sensor size. There are many different sensors out there and without having some standard reference, comparing focal lengths would also become meaningless. This is why everyone still refers to the "35 mm equivalent."
Back to your question...
It seems like most point and shoot cameras with a zoom lens start out in the area of 28-or-35 mm. Let's just choose 35 mm for this example. If the camera has a 4X zoom, it would be a 35-140 equivalent. 140 mm is a moderate telephoto. Suppose it starts at 28 mm, though. This would be a 28-112 equivalent. 112 mm is also a moderate telephoto, but hardly impressive. It would seem that a 5X telephoto would be "better," but the 5X zoom starting at 28 mm would yield exactly the same 140 mm as the first example.
In other words... The "power" expressed in terms of [some number]X doesn't really mean that much. This is especially true in digital SLR's. What matters is the actual focal length of the lens. Fortunately - at least for sake of comparison - the majority of DSLR's have pretty much the same magnification factor and that is around 1.5 to 1.6. It makes direct comparisons a lot easier, but you have to develop a sense of what constitutes a "long" vs. a "moderate" telephoto.
Unless and until we have a major paradigm shift, it will still be helpful to think in terms of 35 mm equivalents when you are buying a lens. This is the "language" that we speak, using 35 mm as the de facto standard. Focal length comparisons make more sense that expressing the magnification by "zoom power."
Here is a mini-tutorial I made myself to compare focal lengths. This is NOT a lens test or a camera test! It is merely intended to show the difference between various focal lengths. The camera was a Nikon D200 and the lens was the Nikon 18-200 VR lens. There is further explanation on the image itself. It would help if you click on "All Sizes" above the image.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7189769@N04... |
