Digital Zoom vs Optical Zoom
February 28, 2009
How many times have you looked through a binocular and felt the urge to capture the splendid view forever? This has been made possible with digital cameras with optical zoom feature. Of late, even mobile phones have incorporated cameras having somewhat the same technology. The market is brimming with camera mobile phones of various brands offering latest and innovative features. One of the most important thing to be taken into consideration while buying a camera mobile phone is the zoom feature and the range capability of the camera that decides the quality of the images. Many a times you would have felt like zooming an image that appeals to you. Magnifying an image is zoom. There are two types of zoom – Optical Zoom and Digital Zoom.
Digital Zoom is a cropping tool that allows you to zero in on a part of the image that you need to expand. The lens does this by way of magnifying what is left inside the frame. Whatever is outside the frame is totally discarded. Then the cropped image goes through a process, whereby new pixels are added to the existing pixels. If you need to expand too much, more pixels needs to be added and thus the image loses clarity and looks flatter.
In the case of digital zoom a portion of the image is expanded to full size and the total image does not come closer and the image quality is also reduced. Usually the image that you see on screen is of better quality than the final image. The area around the portion of the image to be zoomed is cropped and then the rest of the portion is zoomed. This portion will have fewer pixels and since the camera cannot enlarge the pixels to make up for the missing ones, the images taken this way would not have the same clarity as the original one.
Optical zoom is the true form of zoom. With this the clarity and quality of the image remains intact and the full resolution of the camera is used on the zoomed image. The image is brought forward using the optics of the camera. Optical zoom does not reduce the number of pixels used and hence retains the quality of the image. Optical zoom always give sharper images with more resolution than the digital zoom. It physically moves the camera’s lenses and changes the focal length. When the focal length is changed the image appears magnified and fits the full photo frame. Once the zoom position is adjusted you can just click the button and capture the image. Instead of zooming in on an image and blowing it up, optical lens focus on it and magnifies it maintaining the original clarity.
Some of the latest mobile phones are incorporating optical zoom in their cameras, like Nokia N93 and Samsung G800. Finally, if you need not take a print of your photo and just want to send it across via email, digital zoom will do. But if your purpose is to take prints of you images then you should definitely go for a camera with optical zoom. Whatever said and done optical zoom always has an upper hand over the digital zoom.
Related posts:
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- Samsung G800 5MP Camera Mobile Phone
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- Nokia N93 Mobile Phone Review
- Casio Exilim W63CA 8MP Camera Mobile Phone
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