Zooming v cropping, a comparison

Digital zoom is a mere gimmick IMO

Exactly my thoughts! 😀

Paul

There is no doubt that optical is better than digital zoom.

What the poster is showing is that in order to get the same sized image with your optical zoom as you do with your digital zoom you will have to use part of the image only. In doing this you are, once again, only using part of the sensor.

That being the case the test show unequivocally that in the case of his camera the digital zoom – full image, is better than the optical zoom and only a partial image.

Moggy

Digital zoom is a mere gimmick IMO, I use it as a telescope only. I still have my Panasonic FZ20, and still use it alongside my Canon so am very familiar with the digi zoom as shown here. But, the poster didn’t say at what point the Optical Zomm was, before the crop. i.e. the Optical should have been right at it’s limit and then the photo cropped. Them because (In both cases) as rightly said, only a part of the sensor was used, the pictures need upsizing with a proper program for doing such. I use Genuine Fractals, a plug-in for Photoshop.
A plus on the digizoom, I’ve used it at max (48x) to take a picture of a jet at 35k feet to see what airline it was. Grainy as hell, but the picture is frozen, the stabilisation system is (Still) years ahead of the rest. I’m not that impressed by the stabilisation on the Canon 450D. (It was Virgin BTW)

There is no doubt that optical is better than digital zoom.

What the poster is showing is that in order to get the same sized image with your optical zoom as you do with your digital zoom you will have to use part of the image only. In doing this you are, once again, only using part of the sensor.

That being the case the test show unequivocally that in the case of his camera the digital zoom – full image, is better than the optical zoom and only a partial image.

Moggy

Unfortunately that isn’t what the two pictures above show.

Both are unacceptable, but the digitally zoomed version is marginally the better of the two

Exactly, neither are acceptable, but there’s no real argument whether digital or optical zoom is best. Digital loses resolution, optical doesn’t, so with good technique optical will give you better results every time, regardless of what the above images show.

That said, I don’t believe this experiment represents a true or accurate comparison of the two anyway.

Paul

Unfortunately that isn’t what the two pictures above show.

Both are unacceptable, but the digitally zoomed version is marginally the better of the two

Moggy

to point out the difference and to show that zooming isn’t the best option.

But zooming is the best option because when you zoom you still maintain the full resolution of your sensor. If you zoom digitally, you effectively end up with a smaller image with less resolution. Using digital zoom is essentially exactly the same as cropping a digital image in an editing program; you get closer to the subject but at the expense of resolution. Zooming optically is always better.

Paul

Yep, that’s because when you digitally zoom you are effectively reducing the size of the photo sensor array. Less pixels are used to obtain the original image.

So cropping and digital zooming aren’t the same thing and shouldn’t be compared in the manner you’ve done here.

Yes I know they’re not the same thing. That’s why I did the comparison, to point out the difference and to show that zooming isn’t the best option.

Yep, that’s because when you digitally zoom you are effectively reducing the size of the photo sensor array. Less pixels are used to obtain the original image.

So cropping and digital zooming aren’t the same thing and shouldn’t be compared in the manner you’ve done here.