What's the effect if a camera comes with a digital zoom but not an optical zoom?

Question

What's the effect if a camera comes with a digital zoom but not an optical zoom?

Answer 1

An optical zoom is a true zoom.  It magnifies your subject so less of it fills the picture resulting in a high resolution final picture.

A Digital zoom really doesn't zoom at all, it just crops the image exactly the way you would crop it in a photo editing program.  then enlarges it to fill your screen.  The result is a lower resolution picture in either case.

Answer 2

I agree with both of the answers above. If you will just be making small prints (4x6) the poorer quality experienced with digital zoom shouldn't be very evident however.

Answer 3

Digital zoom = more image noise