[OT] Digital camara

[Konstantin Svist]

Martin Marques wrote:
> Hi all, sorry for the OT, but as many people here have more knowledge 
> then me on this topic I'll just ask.
>
> I'm about to by a digital camara and I was looking at a Panasonic 
> Lumix with 5MP and 6x optical zoom.
>
> I tend to see the 6x zoom more interesting then having 7 or more MP, 
> but I'd like to know if I should go for more MP or stay with the good 
> zoom.
>
> Once againg, sorry for the OT.
>
There's a 10x zoom point-and-click camera that was recently released 
(Kodak, I think). It uses 2 lenses to accomplish the high zoom ratio.

As for optical zoom vs. number of megapixels: optical zoom is definitely 
better.
Although it's not really a comparison because number of megapixels 
doesn't correspond... but if you think in terms of digital zoom vs 
optical zoom: digital zoom is just a crop of the image (followed by 
algorithmic stretching - which can really be done after downloading the 
image into your computer). Ignoring the cropped area, a 2x optical zoom 
is very approximately similar to a jump from 6MP to 25MP (or 11MP from 
3MP, etc.)
The real comparison comes from the printed copy - as others mentioned 
already, 4"x5" will look great at as little as 3MP.