Bigger digital or optical zoom?

Question

i'm looking to buy a better digital camera than i have now, and at the moment i'm thinking about a canon powershot SX100 IS which has a 10x optical zoom and 4x digital zoom. 10x sounds impressive, but i was wondering if it's better for it to have a bigger digital or optical zoom? and does the size of the optical matter?

Answer 1

Optical is better. Don't worry much about digital zoom unless you have an impressive MP.

Answer 2

OPTICAL IS BETTER need more reseach?

http://www.steves-digicams.com/best_came...

very informative

Answer 3

All Canons point and shoots have the ability to turn off digital zoom in the preferences.

Some woman seemed to have some issue with wanting the digital zoom but couldn't seem to turn it back on though

http://www.fixya.com/support/t766098-can...

Optical will always be better than digital as digital zoom is just akin to cropping what the camera can see optically. One thing to consider though is that the digital zoom of today is more advanced than the digital zoom of yesteryear due to more advanced algorithms for guessing and smoothing out pixels.

Answer 4

optical zoom is the thing you after , digital zoom works similar to then you enlarge photos on your pc

Answer 5

optical is better.

digital is the same as zooming in and cropping a picture on your computer-the picture is not as high quality.

Answer 6

Optical is better. That particular Canon has a cute mode where you can take amazing close ups of things and it relies on the 10x optical zoom to do it.