3 comments

1. 

   Comment by Answerman on July 10, 2010 at 2:11 pm

   One Word, "Cropping".

   Optical Zoom refers to lenses actually making the subject of the photo appear to be closer to the camera becasue it magnifies. You still are using ALL of your megapixels four the photo.

   Digital zoom is just like cropping. If you zoon in two times, you are making the pixels twice as big, and having half as many of them in your photo. This makes it look grainy.

   Any Point and shoot Digital camera that has at least 1.6 Megapixels will do a fine Job when printing a 4 X 6 Inch Photo…

   Your 1024 X 768 Pixel Monitor only has 786432 Pixels which is 0.786 MegaPixels.

   BUT, the lenses on digital cameras are usually nothing close to impressive in most cases.
   They may have a 3X or 4X Optical Zoom Lens. (Ignore digital Zoom, See above and below term "Cropping").

   You can only get so close you your subject.
   For Example:
   My Two sons were playing in the pool on a bright sunny day. My wife wanted my 11 year old daughter to take a photo of both of them My daughter wasted 5 pictures trying to get them both, but my Brat of a 9 year old decided to Jump the other direction to try to mess up every one of her shots.

   The Photos were ruined, we all thought. BUT, she was using a 5 Megapixel Casio camera.
   I looked at each of these landscape images again. I found that it I cropped out the Brat by turning the photo 90 degrees to be a Portrait shape and getting rid of the 2/3 of the photo that was bad, there was a fantastic image.
   This image had 1.66 Pixels left in it which produced a Brillaint 4 x 6 photo of my One son.
   The Lighting was perfect, the color was great, the reflections off the crests of the water was breathtaking. There were five little droplets of water that had been frozen in time dripping off his ear and there were 5 little shadows of the droplets on his chest.
   The Photo is an award winner that we would have Thrown away if we did not have enough megapixels in our Camera.

   More megapixels does not make your snapshots look better.
   More megapixels gives you the freedom to look for the hidden beauty in each photo, crop out the bad, and have fantastic quality left in the Image.

   Source(s):

   Picture One Both Boys Full resolution. Please allow time it is large.
   http://giftindex.com/photos/timdanpool.j...
   Picture two, just Daniel after Cropping.
   http://giftindex.com/photos/danielpool.j...

   No computer monitor can do these two photos justice. Remember the monitor only shows about 1 7th of the pixels in its highest resolution.
   If you really want to see what I am talking about, copy both photos to a cd or a memory card, take it to walmart, walgreens, CVS pharmacy, or anyone that does full resolution 4 x 6 prints and print them out. You will KNOW why you want more than 3 Megapixels.

   P.S. My daughter age 11 DID win the Blue ribbon with Honors at the county 4H fair with this photo and nine others that she took herself. She also got a Blue ribbon at the State fair, too.

   The camera she used has been discontinued, but its replacement is here.

   The Casio EX-S500 Exilim Digital Camera

   http://www.radioshack.com/product/index….
   and it fits in your purse or pocket.

2. 

   Comment by Figato on July 10, 2010 at 2:11 pm

   The optical zoom uses a lens to close in on the subject.
   The digital zoom just cut’s the center of the picture and enlarges it.
   Zooming digitally decreases the quality dramatically.

3. 

   Comment by brews on July 10, 2010 at 2:11 pm

   Optical zoom is the lens. The more you zoom, the more likely the camera aperture (size of the opening) is to close down somewhat, so it may result in a slower shutter speed and possibly a somewhat blurred photo. Digital zoom isn’t true zoom. It just takes a portion of the area of view and blows that parts up. It usually makes the image a little more grainy.

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