Digital zooms-any views?

[nytecam]

I've never challenged the popular idea that digital zooms are 'trash' but I've had second thought via this moon sequence via a dual camcorder/camera in camera-mode that holds up quite well at x20 zoom eg x5 optical+x4 digital zoom - even the gross x50 zoom at modest enlargement fairs quite well from a 34mm fl lens little 'long' than the human eye lens.

The 10Mb CMOS sensor 3664x2748p exceeds the HD video frame 1920x1080 and 1280x720p by a factor x2.7 and x3.8 respectively so that digital zooms can extend to these values with minimum loss of vertical resolution and obviously less zoom to the horizontal. Any views about digital zooms?

[nytecam]

supporting graphic

[Jason Green]

Morning Nytecam, happy Christmas!

Well, I used to have a Nisis DigiCam DV6 with a display resolution of, or at least as I used it, 320x240 pixels. It also had an 8x digital zoom (...no Optical) - and at the full deployment it would be pretty noticeable! However, am I right in thinking your camcorder is HD-compatible? If so, given the number of pixels make up the video frame, you could easily lose a good few pixels due to digital zoom deployment before noticing any effects.

However, theoretically you'll notice a little more of the digital's effects when viewing the footage on an HD-compatible screen than you would on a CRT or standard LCD TV because they display less pixels anyway. That is to say, while the footage would be best viewed on an HD-compatible television or other, the zoom would be even less noticeable on a standard LCD if my theorising is correct! Not that it seems to be in your images either

I hope this helps.

Take care,

Jason

[Jim Ford]

But isn't digital zoom the same as enlarging a crop from an un-zoomed image? In this case, we've all got digital zoom when we import an image into the most basic image manipulation program.

Jim