For a camcorder what is the difference between digital zoom and optical zoom?

Question

For a camcorder what is the difference between digital zoom and optical zoom?

Answer 1

Optical zoom is a zoom using the camera's optics; the lens elements actually move to magnify the subject.  The image will have the same quality at all parts of the zoom.

Digital "zoom" is the camera "guessing" what the image would look like if it was zoomed in.  This results in a pixellated, lower-quality image.  Personally, I don't even bother looking at digital zoom when buying a camcorder, because I turn it off anyway.  If I really wanted to digitally "zoom" an image, I could do the same thing on my computer later.

Answer 2

Optical zoom is what you want. It works with the lenses to make things bigger or smaller. Once the image goes through the lenses and the imaging chips and through the electronics in the camcorder, Digital zoom just makes the pixels bigger, so using digital zoom will result in reduced quality

Personally, I think digital zoom should be removed from camcorders - not only does it reduce image quality, but no one can actually hold a camcorder still when fully zoomed in on something. Even tripods have a problem because they can pick up shaking from the ground and the camcorder's stabilization is not enough to eliminate that.