Canon S2 IS Digital Zoom

[johnbre]

New S2 IS owner here. I have read in a couple of places that you should leave the digital zoom feature off. Why is that? If true, when would you expect to use it?

Thanks!

[Shoreliner11]

I would leave it off as well. IMO digital zoom is a function for people the extreme novice photgrapher. It zooms in more but only by lowering quality. You'd be better off just always leave it off and crop your pictures later off if need be. I asked myself the same question the other day..."When you'd use digital zoom," I honestly could not think of one positive aspect of using it that can't be done with a crop later on. Maybe someone else has an idea.
Aaron

[estrugo]

It's because the digital zoom, magnifies the image aquired by the optical zoom, this means that the image is enlarged, making bigger the pixels... not moving the lens further

So you got a pixelated image instead of a smooth one. Is like doing zoom in a computer program, you actually can see this, if you see a picture at 200% or 300% zoom

I have found useful the digital zoom sometimes, specially for taking very far shots that will be printed in a small format, but this really depends on the distance you want to clear... and the final quality you want for your picture

[overcated]

There must be a hundred settings and I guess everyone has their own preferences for each. My digital zoom is OFF. For me, digital zoom produces junk shoots - but that's just me. As I understand it, digital zoom just makes the pixels bigger BUT the whole reason for buying a 5 MP camera is to make the pixels smaller. I suggest you shoot a vew shots with it turned ON. Zoom all the way out so that you enter the digital zoom area and see what you think.

[estrugo]

Now, it's like having a 1728mm lens, and if you place a teleconverter... dont' tell :-D

[estrugo]

BTW I also have mine set to OFF, as I rarely find a situation in which I have to use the digital zoom. 12x is far enough for me...

[glenindy]

New S2 IS owner here. I have read in a couple of places that you should leave the digital zoom feature off. Why is that? If true, when would you expect to use it?

Thanks!

If you are in highest resolution and SuperFine, then the digital zoom can be used with reasonably good results. It increases your zoom to a max of 48x. The bad news is, if you need to crop a picture that has been digitally zoomed, it will be more blocky, specially noticeable in a printout. Try it. See for yourself. You may be able to live with it on some occasions. It all depends on how you plan to use the picture.

[Moppie]

The Digital Zoom does not zoom in, or magnifiy anything.
It simply records a crop of the image off the sensor.
It is exactly the same as cropping an image in photoshop, or other editing software, with one big differnce, cropping the image on your PC gives you far better results as the software used is a lot more powerful than what can be run on a compact camera, especialy if your useing photoshop.

[johnbre]

Thanks for all your replies. Since I already use Photoshop, I'll keep that feature off!

[Poco]

There is one positive aspect to digital zoom (not positive enough for me to ever use it, but the only redeming quality).

If you are not shooting at the highest resolution your camera supports (let's say you are only shooting at one have the width and height possible (1/4 of the pixels) then you should be able to use the digital zoom up to a point (4x) without any quality loss. I haven't tried this, but I would hope the camera is smart enough to crop the highest quality before storing it, and not try to crop the cropped image.

Like I said, that isn't a very good reason, because you should always use the highest resolution settings of your camera at all time, but it is the only possible benefit.

[JM Aggie08]

IMO, digital zoom just makes the picture larger, not necessarily zooming in the object in mind, but enlarging the picture as a whole, distorting and making pixels larger. Kind of ruins quality.

[waussie]

Just thought would mention that digital cropping does not change the quality of the image, it's the digital version of cutting the unwanted bits from the edges of a print.
The image is degraded if you crop say 400x300 and then print or display it at 800x600.

[plop]

digital zoom is useful when take pictures at lower resolution.
if you have max. resolution 4Mpix, and you take pics at 1 Mpix, you can use 2X digital zoom without loss of quality...

[lakiluno]

Digital zoom does reduce the quality of the photo.

Some cameras digital zoom doesn't (casio), and in those cases simply crops the image, but you get a lower resolution output.

As far as I am aware, all Canon cameras crop the image, and then upsize it to the original set resolution, resulting in poor quality images.

[spur]

And now for something completely different. Everyone saying it degrades the image is partially right. The rest of the story is that although the digital zoom only crops the picture that the optical lens took. It does it to the image before it is compressed. SO the image from the camera at 48X is cleaner and has more detail than the image at 12X zoomed to 400%. While neither image will win any prizes the one taken with digital zoom is much less pixelated. Try it yourself, take 2 pictures 1 at 12X and 1 at 48X. Open the images side by side and veiw the 48X at 100% and the 12X at 400%.
Now as to how useful digital zoom might be. Not very, but if you want to show someone the hail damage on your roof and you don't want to climb up there you can take a picture at 48X and show it to them on your camera. If there is something across the lake that you can't recognize, shoot it at 48X and you can see it is a treasure chest overflowing with gold and not a pile of empty beer cans. Now all you have to do is figure out how to get over there before anyone else.:lol: :lol: :lol:
By the way I usually have mine turned off but it is easy to turn on when I need it. It is not totally useless.