Which is a better type of zoom on a digital camera digital or optical?

Question

im buying a camera and one has 5x digital and the other has 5x optical. which is better please answer

Answer 1

A digital zoom doesn't really zoom in the true sense.  It just displays a small section of the original picture at a larger size. So you have only one fifth of the pixels (at best) that your camera is capable of capturing.  Eg if you have an 8 megapixel camera, using the 5 times zoom at maximum digital zoom will be the same as using a 1.6 megapixel camera. This is very poor quality.   It is no different from cutting a small section with scissors out of a picture and scanning it to computer then making it a large physical size again. You wouldn't expect good quality. An optical zoom will actually physically zoom on to the small area you want to capture and the full 8 megapixels is used to record this. You have a much better quality image.

Answer 2

optical .

digital zoom only stretches part of the picture and gives a poor image quality.

Answer 3

Optical, do not use digital zoom unless you like lousy pictures. I shoot at my cameras best resolution, then crop the pic in the computer.

Answer 4

Optical

Answer 5

Optical zoom = zooms closer to the subject then takes the photo

Digital zoom = takes the photo then zooms in on it, and makes it all pixellated.

This site goes into further detail:

http://www.photoxels.com/article-optical...

Answer 6

Optical zoom. Digital zoom gives you lousy pictures.