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Digital or Optical Zoom? When you purchase your digital camera, you will learn that it has both a digital and an optical zoom. This can be confusing to the first-time buyer, so please read the following to understand the difference. The optical zoom is a more natural feature and works in much the same way as the zoom lens on a 35mm film camera. By adjusting the lens your subject appears closer to you. Optical zooms also retain the quality of the photo. Digital zoom, on the other hand, works by cropping the essential area of the shot, so that when the zoom is at its desired length, the photo quality will not be anywhere near as articulate as an optical zoom. Using the optical zoom produces far superior results. There's seldom any camera-induced blurring (camera shake blurring is caused by human error and not the fault of the camera!) which, unfortunately, cannot be said about using a digital zoom. The best way around accidentally using the wrong type of zoom is to switch off the digital zoom facility, so that your camera (and you) are dependent solely on the more superior optical zoom. But, you can get even sharper photos by moving closer to your subject instead of using the zoom facility. Just a foot or two can make a huge and improved difference. Don't totally discard the digital zoom, however, because shots taken with this facility, whilst not being sharp enough or of a good enough quality to print out, the pictures can be used on the Internet where there's a much lower resolution requirement necessary to display your work. |