What's the difference between optical and digital zoom in cameras?

Question

What's the difference between optical and digital zoom in cameras?

Answer 1

Take a look that the article at http://clickdigitalproducts.com/articles...  about digital and optical zoom.

Answer 2

Optical Zoom uses the lenses in the camera to physically 'zoom in', whereas Digital Zoom allows the software to artificially 'zoom in' by taking a smaller part of the picture and enlarging it.  per se.

Answer 3

digital zoom sucks...

Answer 4

Optical zoom is when you zoom in like this..

http://www.flickr.com/photos/little_pook...

Digital zoom is when you zoom in with the computer. It gets fuzzy (pixelated I suppose is the word) when you get closer because the data is not really there. Like enlarging a small piece of film onto a large screen.  

Answer 5

The optical zoom is achieved by aligning the physical lenses to make the subject appear larger.

The digital zoom is a special processor in the camera that interpolates the image in order to make the subject appear larger. Interploating is achieved by adding pixels that closely resemble, but not necessarily match, other pixels in the image to enlarge the image.

Digital zoom will lose sharpness and detail of the image, while an optical zoom tends to preserve it far better. Digicams that use an interpolated sensor are basically using, for example, a 5MP sensor to create a 10MP image. When combined with digital zooming, the image quality can suffer considerably.

I would never recommend using a digital zoom or an interpolated sensor.  

Answer 6

Optical zoom doesn't break the pixels when you zoom no matter how far. Digital zoom gets fuzzy and the pixels break when you zoom it too much.

For pinhole video cameras check this out http://www.video-surveillance-guide.com/...

  

Answer 7

Ok quick answer! optical Zoom is given by the lenses on the camera, meaning real Zoom, = Good quality zoom!!!

Digital Zoom is just that, digitally zooming in the picture, so it's like you open a picture on the computer, and you zoom in! so what do you get little squares = Bad quality zoom!!!!