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The Difference between Optical Zoom and Digital Zoom

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Alan_Martin
The Difference between Optical Zoom and Digital Zoom

The so-called zoom can be literally understood as the focal length change. Friends who are familiar with the lens are not unfamiliar with the concept of focal length. The 50mm and 85mm lenses we are talking about are focal lengths. The change of focal length means the change of the size of the object in the picture and the change of focal length. When it is large, the field of view becomes narrower, and the proportion of objects in the screen becomes larger. When the focal length decreases, the field of view becomes larger, and the proportion of objects in the screen becomes smaller. So when we are shooting, we only need to turn the zoom ring to zoom in and zoom out at will, without moving our position at all.

The zoom on the camera is usually achieved by turning the zoom ring of the lens. Some compact cameras need to adjust the zoom lever on the camera to control the lens motor to achieve zoom. Different cameras achieve different zooming methods, and even some cameras can continue to zoom in after the lens zoom is stopped. What is the principle behind this? Let's take a look at it specifically, optical zoom and digital zoom.

 

Optical zoom

 

The zoom method we mentioned earlier by changing the focal length of the lens is called optical zoom. Because the principle of optical zoom is achieved by changing the zoom ring to change the position of the lens inside the lens. So in general, when we hear people zoom lens, it refers to such a lens that can change the focal length by moving the lens inside the lens.

Our common 24mm-70mm lens can be changed from 24mm to 70mm at will. We can intuitively see the change of the corresponding scene in the viewfinder. Generally, a zoom lens requires an additional zoom lens group, so it is larger in size and weight than a fixed focus lens. Different lens zoom design principles are different, there are internal zoom and external zoom, so whether the zoom can be zoomed can not be judged simply by whether the lens can be extended or retracted. For example, the lens length of the Nikon 70-200 lens does not change during the entire zoom stroke.

 

Digital zoom

 

The so-called digital zoom can be understood literally, and it is realized through the digital principle inside the camera rather than the optical principle. When digital zooming, the camera will crop the current picture to enlarge the picture. When zooming in, the camera uses an internal algorithm to fill in the pixels that are vacant after zooming in, so it is called digital zoom. The principle of digital zoom causes serious loss of image quality after zooming.

If you don't allow the camera to crop the picture to zoom, you can try to crop the finished photo with the software, and you can get the same zoom effect. If you have a high-resolution machine, you can still get better results when you take a second crop of the photos you have taken. It should be noted that the resolution of the cropped picture will be significantly reduced. When you want to print the photo after the second cropping in a large size, pay special attention to the impact of the resolution.

 

To sum up

The invention of zoom is of extraordinary significance for shooting. We can change the shooting angle of view without changing the shooting position. Especially for some situations where it is inconvenient to get close to the subject, the zoom lens can quickly zoom in on the subject. But we must remember the difference between optical zoom and digital zoom. In particular, keep in mind that digital zoom can impair image quality. When we bought some compact cameras, the advertisers also included the zoom factor of the digital zoom in order to increase the promotion. When you use the zoom function, the optical zoom will continue to enlarge the picture, which is actually a digital zoom. If you don't like this feature, there are generally settings to disable the digital zoom function.

Find more about optical zoom and digital zoom, click here.

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