Optical and Digital Zoom
When buying a digital camera one of the first things that shoppers look for is the zoom that the camera has, this can be confusing though as there are two types of zoom in optical and digital zoom which have different qualities and just to confuse matters even further they are also often combined.
The zoom feature in a digital camera is allot of fun and very useful as it allows you to zoom in on objects that are too far away to photograph normally, the zoom is measured in the amount of times that the subject is enlarged so a digital camera with a 3x zoom will make an object look 3 times as big (or give the effect that you are 3 times as near to the object). Digital cameras offer magnification that ranges from 2x (very low) up to zooms in the hundreds (very high and great for capturing very distant objects), a zoom of around 3x is usually enough for you to get good photos in normal circumstances and most digital cameras offer an optical zoom of 3x or over.
The problem is that there are two kinds of zoom and they are both very different, they are optical zoom and digital zoom. Optical zoom is the 'proper' zoom as it uses the optics of the lens to bring the image closer, this is the same technique used in traditional film cameras and is by far the best quality available in a digital camera. Digital zoom however is a process inside of the digital camera that enlarges a portion of the image while cropping the rest of the image so it is not a real zoom, doing this means a loss in quality so you should always look for optical zoom when buying a digital camera.
When you buy a digital camera with zoom most shops will state the optical zoom and the digital zoom separately (for example Optical Zoom 3x, Digital Zoom 6x) so you can easily see the level of optical zoom available, this is the key to picking a good quality zoom in the digital camera you are buying so always make sure it has optical zoom and try to get the best magnification that you can. Some shops will combine the optical and digital zoom simply to make the number sound bigger but you should avoid this if they do not give the separate optical and digital zoom values as you will not know the power of the optical zoom, these zooms are very different so should always be kept separate.
So when buying a digital camera with a quality zoom you should always look at the power of the optical zoom and consider the digital zoom as a bonus, it can come in useful but will degrade the image quality and does not zoom properly (it can in fact be disabled in lots of digital cameras which is not a bad idea). We have listed a selection of digital cameras below but have only included digital cameras with an optical zoom, they are from a large selection of UK shops and are also ordered with the cheapest first so it is easy to find a cheap digital camera with a quality optical zoom here.
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