Can you explain *simply* the differences between optical and digital zoom?

I want to buy a small, inexpensive digital camera for snapshots.

Optical zoom refers to an actual change in the lens in order to get closer to the thing you want to take a photo of. That's why the camera lens moves when you are using optical zoom. Digital zoom is basically like when you have an image on the computer, and you just zoom in with the cursor. It doesn't get a clearer, better image. Thus, optical zoom is more important than digital zoom.

The Optical zoom ratio of a digital camera measures how much the lens can actually zoom in to make subjects appear closer. Be careful to not confuse Optical Zoom with Digital Zoom. Optical zoom actually enlarges a picture while keeping the resolution and sharpness of the picture high.

Always go for a higher optical zoom than digital zoom.

Real simple...

Optical uses a LENS to accomplish the zoom... (and is the superior method)

Digital... works on the image there... and "blows up" pixels... and with each digital zoom, you lose quality.

I hope this helps

digital is to make the picture clear, optical is to make the picture wide or less wide

Digital is a cheat and all grainy


only go for ones with at least 22x optical, you don't want mych more than that bcoz of shake

unless you pervin, then you is gonna shake anyway

Optical zoom is the lense mechanism moving in and out. This is the better of the two. Digital zoom takes over when the optical is maxed out. It pushes the image further by expanding the size of the megapixils in the camera. This compromizes on clarity.

optical zoom is when you zoom manually and your focus might be a little out of wack, digital zoom is when you zoom it automatically adjusts your focus.

Simply put optical zoom uses the actual camera lenses to focus the image you are looking at and digital zoom uses digital enhancement, basically enlarging the image. Digital is not as clean and clear as optical because it is just expanding the same image and the larger it gets the more deteriorated the image becomes. With optical the image does not loose quality as it zooms.

Optical zoom actually uses lenses to zoom in, giving you a sharp image. Digital Zoom just enlarges and crops the photo, making it more pixelated if you zoom too far. How far you can digitally zoom depends on how many Megapixels the photo has. If it has a higher number of megapixels, you can digitally zoom closer.

Optical zoom uses lenses to pull a far away image closer, like a telescope.

Digital zoom takes a fixed image and using computer logic, blows that image up.

To see why digital zoom is not a very good idea, take a magnifying glass to a newspaper photo. It's the same concept. You're not only magnifying the image, you're blowing up the dots that make up the image. This causes the image to look grainy or very blurry when you digitally zoom a large amount.

optical zoom is done by the lenses of the cam, whereas digital zoom is zooming the pic without moving the lenses, ie., digitally enlarging the pic

Optical zoom is where the lenses physically extend to magnify your subject.

Digital zoom crops the image you're about to take and magnifies it. To make the cropped area bigger, digital zoom makes up, or interpolates pixels to add to the image, which usually gives less than satisfactory results.

You're getting a lot of answers here and not all of them are correct. In fact, a lot of them are quite wrong. To make matters worse, the people that DO give correct answers seem to have trouble explaining what digital zoom is.
So far, the very first answer (by King_Yellow) is the best one.
What it comes down to, is that you should only compare the optical zoom of different models - digital zoom is a sales gimmick.
If you're having trouble narrowing down your selection, here are a few useful sites:
To get list of cameras that you might be interessted in: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/compare....
To compare any cameras side by side: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sidebysi...
And for in depth revies of specific models: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/default.... and http://www.steves-digicams.com/hardware_...
Best wishes!

digital zoom is better cuz even if its far away & ya probobly cant see it, the camera can optical cant but if ya on a budget, probably the least expensive is optical