700X Zoom?

Often the most prominently displayed specification displayed on your camera is the Zoom multiplier. If you look at the body of most inexpensive cameras you’ll find that the “digital zoom” multiplier is stamped, quite large, across the side of your camera. Its funny to me that this feature is so blatantly displayed when it is actually quite useless. That’s right, useless! As a matter of fact, one of the first things most professionals or informed consumers do is deactivate this misleading feature. As of late, consumers have caught on and manufactures have toned down the “zoom label” on the pricier consumer models and even removed it from more expensive prosumer models.

Now I’ll tell you why it sucks.

A camcorders “optical zoom” is mainly determined by the size and make of the lens. 12x up to 30x are common optical zoom levels found on most camcorders. This should be considered the maximum zoom level because anything beyond the optical zoom is simulated. The camera is basically digitally resizing the video input in real-time. When the image is enlarged the area between the original pixels needs to be filled with new pixels that are simulated by the cameras chip. This common process is called “interpolation”. The same process can be observed by opening a small image in a photo editing program then enlarging it by three or four hundred percent. Keep in mind that an image editor does a much better job of interpolating pixels because it has more processing power and takes more time when a camera has a weak processor and must perform the task real-time. If you were perform this task and the final image looks okay to you, then by all means, enjoy your 700x zoom. If not, most cameras have an option to turn the digital zoom off.

Leave a Reply