Digital Zoom

Question: Is there any value to using digital zoom in the camera? In other words is there any difference in image quality between images digitally zoomed in the camera and those digitally zoomed on the PC ?

NO




Really,.. the resampling in a Photoshop is much more likely to produce acceptable results than those in camera. I assume you are not asking in refernce to a purchase but for actual use. In either case I suggest that you completely ignore the "digital zoom"

Using only the lens you will allways have the option to enlarge a picture with software,. and still have the possiblity of keeping the in tact original. If you use digital zoom, you may as well shoot at the worst jpeg quality and resolution. the damage will be done and no turning back.

I read somewhere about the proper operation of digital zoom.

Goto menu
Goto digital zoom
Turn off
Never go back

Digital zoom would be more aptly named "digital cropping" and has little value when you can crop pictures in a more timely fashion on your computer. The only rare instance where it might be useful is to take advantage of the camera's auto exposure when taking pictures of very dark subjects with a lot of back-lighting. I can't speak for all cameras but mine will stop down to properly expose the actual pictured area when you zoom digitally. Still, I normally leave it off.

Thanks to everyone who answered my question. You all have pretty much confirmed what I suspected. I kinda hoped there would be a techie weigh in on this, because there is one part that I wasn't sure of and that is why I asked the Q.

I don't understand the internals at all. It seems to me that the camera must initially capture the data in a native (Raw?) mode, then compress it into JPEG. If the digital zoom occurred on the raw data, before the compression, there might be a theoretical advantage to digital zoom under some conditions. In any case, its beyond me. I'll continue to leave my digital zoom off, and just try to frame better, LOL!

The camera's builtin digital zoom will likely suffice for most part.

In some cases third party extrapolation software may create better enlargements, so test it out. (Take two identical photos. One optically zoomed and one digitally zoomed. Match the optical image to the same size of the digital and compare image quality.)

Also, if you are in the habit of shooting in small format the digital zoom in the camera will likely beat out the third party software.

Dig zoom is usefull, if your out somewhere and u want to see something 1km+ away. Or at the footy, and trying to pic a face in the crowd, and yep, thats about it.

As for pictures, like everyone eles says (

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