Why do digital camera offer so-called "digital zoom"?

[Deja Q]

This is cropping-and-enlarging (aka "loss of quality expressed using words that make it sound like a good thing to you") and nothing more.

[Ms. Toad]

1. To impress people who don't understand

that optical zoom is the only thing that matters if you care about image resolution - digital zoom is just photo-shopping that takes place in the camera. Personally, I'd rather get a broader picture using the best optical zoom I had, then zoom and crop further using my software. Amazing what things I find in the edges of pictures that I would have missed if I had zoomed and cropped in the camera rather than waiting.

...But if you believe that your photos must come unedited (including cropping and zooming) from your camera, I guess it is a reasonable option.

[F.Gordon]

2. LOL

The Masked Filmsie Bandit makes another hit and run appearance.
:rofl:

HypnoToad.... why don't you enter a photo in the Reflections Contest?

BTW: I don't recall many Digital Camera's being marketed on the "digital zoom" thing. A few years ago... yes. If you're going to poke fun at us digital hacks at least try to stay up-to-date. :)

:hi:

[regnaD kciN]

3. Actually, a lot of the lower-cost cameras...

...still have a sticker on the front with something like "12x Total Zoom/3x Optical Zoom." They generally don't mention optical versus digital zoom; instead it's overall zoom and optical zoom.

Most of the higher-end digicams now have a decent-enough optical zoom range that digital zoom isn't needed, but virtually all of the lower-cost cameras have, at most, 3x optical. When you realize that many of the owners of those cameras don't have Photoshop or a similar program, and rarely if ever process their digital photos, you can understand why they'd want a feature that lets them get closer (even at the cost of resolution) right out of the box.

[F.Gordon]

4. I'm sure there are few marketed that way

I was just giving HypnoToad a hard time. I've used the digital zoom on my Nikon Coolpix 950 once. Pretty crappy result.

I do understand what you're saying. Someone who wants to do everything in camera.... though I doubt many people actually use the digital zoom. Merican consumers always like BIG numbers. We could also talk about how megapixels don't represent the quality of the camera.

[regnaD kciN]

7. Actually, I know of at least one photo that was posted to this group...

...and received praise from the members here, that was shot using digital zoom.

(I'm not telling which one, although it's not one of mine.)

[F.Gordon]

8. I could take a wild guess

:)

My experience with digital zoom hasn't been very productive. I have no idea where my shots are but this is an example of how my Nikon craps out....



I would suppose that this would be one "function" where the larger megapixies could produce a better image. My Nikon is a 2.1 meg.

:hi:

Again.... if you haven't picked up on it yet HypnoToad believes that all Digital Cameras are just worthless expensive toys.

[DS1]

6. *snort*

:spray:

[TahitiNut]

5. So I had something I could disable on my cheap little Kodak?

Useless as teats on a boar. :shrug:

[ConsAreLiars]

9. There are two "good" reasons.

One is storage size. A 1/4 size crop takes 1/16th the amount of space on the memory stick, and so you don't waste space with irrelevant image data. And the second is that there is no need to do later the extra work crop out all that irrelevant stuff.

That said, when my son asked for a camera I paid the extra bucks to get him one with a 12X optical zoom because degrading the quality of the image with a pseudo-12X zoom seemed too high a price to pay in terms of quality.