What is the difference in optical and digital zoom on a digital camera? what are good #'s when buying one?

Optical zoom is true optical zooming of your image. It's the equvalent of changing from a wide-angle lens to a normal or a telephoto. There's no practical compromise on your digital image and you have the most flexibility with your final product.

In point & shoot digitals, 3x is the norm, but 4-7x is becoming more available. Some models have 10, 12, or 15x.

Avoid any reference to digital zoom range. Those are artificial numbers as the camera just enlarges the pixels of an existing image.

It's like having a pint of paint. With digital zoom, you spread the pain thinner and thinner to cover that wall. With optical zoom, you get more paint.

optical is important

digital zoom is a great way to spoil a pic


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Optical Zoom is the number to pay attention to.

George, your painting analogy was AWESOME.

Look for the highest optical you can afford. I have a Canon S3 with 12x zoom and it takes awsome pix in the largest size and can be reduced down for printing but found taking pix with the largest size gives me the best clarity.

3 or higher optical
don't even worry about digital
it degrades the quality of the picture