Most people who have used a 35mm camera or an APS camera are aware of only optical zoom. Digital zoom is an invention of digital video cameras. It is not uncommon to see digital videocams with 300x digital zoom. For our purpose, digital zoom is not really zoom, in the strictest definition of the term. What digital zoom does is enlarge a portion of the image, thus simulating optical zoom. In other words, the camera crops a portion of the image and then enlarges it back to size. In so doing, you lose image quality. If youve been regularly using digital zoom and wondered why your pictures did not look that great, now you know. So, as far as digital zoom is concerned, you can do it in camera or you can do it afterwards in an image editing software. Any cropping and enlarging can be done in an image editing software, such as Photoshop. So, when a digital camera is advertised with 3x digital zoom, no big deal. If you do it in camera, image quality is irreversibly lost. Someone in a digital camera forum once mentioned that he uses digital zoom because it might mean the difference between capturing a great shot or not at all. Umm, lets think about this a bit. True, if by zooming digitally in camera you get to see what your subject is doing and thus can capture the shot at the right moment. So, its really up to you, if you know what youre doing. Here it is: Always use optical zoom. If you do use digital zoom, use it only if it does not appreciably impact your image quality.

If you rarely print past 4x6 in. When comparing cameras, you should always use optical zoom.

There is no point in comparing digital zoom with digital zoom or optical zoom with total zoom. Always compare optical zoom with optical zoom. Resolution What about optical zoom vs. Now yall know that we cannot and should not be comparing apples n oranges, but we still try. The megapixels resolution of a digital camera can be thought of as the number of pixels available to capture an image. With a 2 megapixels camera, you have 2 million pixels to record an image. Whether you zoom or not does not affect how many pixels are used to capture the image. So, zoomed at its maximum, a 2 megapixels 3x optical zoom digital camera will still have captured a 2 million pixels image. Likewise, a 3 megapixels 2x optical zoom digital camera will always capture a 3 million pixels image. With a 2 megapixels digital camera, you can make good 4x6 in. With a 3 megapixels digital camera, you can make good 8x10 in. So, as far as image quality is concerned, the 3 megapixels camera is better. Unless you are always going to take pictures at max. 3MP camera is better because at 2x optical zoom and less, it is always capturing images with more detail than the 2MP camera. What we are really trying to say is this: do not compare. If the answer is both, then find a digital camera that has both.

If its outside your pocketbook range, then choose a digital camera for what is more important to you. We usually recommend buying a digital camera with at least 3 megapixels resolution because of the better image quality. 3x optical zoom is standard with most consumer digital cameras. We never bother to check how much digital zoom a camera provides, and ignore the marketing hype surrounding it.

We always disable digital zoom in camera, choosing to do our own cropping and enlarging in an image editing software. Only optical zoom matters when selecting a digital camera. Smart Zoom works only if you select an image size smaller than the full available image size. So, for example, if your digital camera is capable of producing a 5MP image, Smart Zoom is available only if you select to save your images as 4MP or less.

Say, your digital camera is 5MP and you select to save your images as 3MP. So, in effect, youve basically more or less retained the same image quality but you have to save your resulting simulated zoomed image in a smaller image size. 3MP image can be enlarged up to without image degradation. 3MP, which means that Smart Zoom is useful only in digital cameras with 4MP and above. So, our recommendation still holds. Always compare optical zoom with optical zoom.

That so dont worry 3 or 4 Megapixels digital camera will do the job. The resolution of film really has to do with the resolving power of the lens you are using, coupled with the ISO and type of film that you are using. Of course you have to realize that 35mm is not the holy grail of film. Currently the largest digital sensor available on the market is made by Kodak and has a megapixel rating of 39, and is utilized in the new line of Hasselblad camera. Secondly even if a digital sensor were produced that could exceed 200 megapixels, current CF card technology is not available to make such a camera practical for daily use. You would have to most likely work in a studio and the camera would be teathered to a computer with a sizeable hard drive.

30,000, so lets just imagine there is a 900 megapixel camera, the pricetag on such a camera would be like a downpayment on the space shuttle. There is no one single correct answer. Thus, depending on what you want to do, one tool may be better than another. 10 feet by 15 feet, or 39 megapixel image will break apart, whereas a drum scan of a 8x10 negative will produce a sharp, clear, and tonally perfect image. As for the idea of wasted film, study photography more. You might have misunderstood what youve heard. Digital cameras capture images as pixel elements, known as pixels. Simply put, a megapixel is equal to one million pixels.

The more pixels, the higher the image resolution. The number of megapixels is only one aspect relating to the quality of a camera, or the actual quality of a photo it is capable of producing. Factors such as camera sensor and the optical quality of a lens play equally important roles. When you have few Megapixels camera and want for better pictures, you can have softwares like Adobe Photoshops that could enhance your image quality. What you can do here is Image editing, enhance color quality, lighting, contrast, etc, through your computer before you print them.