Reptile & Amphibian Forums

What is the difference between them. I was reading some reviews and it said something about avoiding digital zooms. Im not sure if it was for a particicular model or just a general statement. Can someone please shed some light on this subject for me. If you could also clue me in as to what role optics play (from the previous post) I would appreciate it. As you can see I know nothing about cameras other than point and shoot. One last thing, I would like to be able to take pics to post on forums such as this, have pics I like developed in 4x6, and email pics (not sure if that is the same process as posting on forums). If anyone has any suggestions on cameras that fit those specifications please let me know. Thanks for your help. EP

Digital zooms are just selling points to those that don't understand digital. It actually seems like lying to the consumer to me.
Optical zoom is the only thing that counts. Optical actually "magnifies" the image, digital only crops the optical image.
You can do that with any post processing program like photoshop, photoimpact, etc.
JP
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Snakes of Hudspeth County, Texas

Digital zoom enlarges the pictures in software, similar to what you'd get by enlarging it in Photoshop or other image editing program. It can only work with the information in a no-zoom pic, so it won't be as clear as an optical zoom, which works like a zoom in a film camera (clear pictures).

For example, I took both these pics from the same spot, one with 4x digital zoom, and the other with a similar amount of optical zoom. They are cropped from the original.

Theoretically, my camera with 10x optical and 4x digital can do up to 40x zoom, but the digital zoom results are only a little better than just enlarging the 10x image.

From this: (no zoom)

To this: (10x optical, 4x digital)

Now, that last pic doesn't look too bad, but that's really because it's resized a lot smaller.

Oh, and if the largest size picture you'd want in a print is 4x6, a 2 megapixel camera would be fine. For emailing pics, you'd probably want to resize the pics smaller, no matter what kind you got - unless it is a sub-megapixel camera, which you couldn't get good prints out of anyway.
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-audri
Webpage/Pics

Thanks for the info and the pics for examples. It makes a lot of sense to me now. A lot easier than trying to understand reviews and websites when I know nothing about them. Thats some crazy zoom youve got on that camera; what kind is it? Thanks again. EP