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What’s the difference between optical zoom and digital zoom?

A good question indeed! Many folks are often told to look for optical zoom rather than digital, but why? After all, we've been taught that digital is good, right? Well, not quite.

Optical zoom uses high-quality glass to magnify the actual scene you are taking a photo of. If your camera has five megapixels, the optical zoom will allow you to take a five megapixel photo of the scene. Digital zoom, on the other hand, will only magnify a part of the scene, by cropping it and enlarging it. It's taking something small and enlarging it.

For example, if you take a photo of a flower, using optical zoom, you can zoom right in and have a high-definition, crystal clear view of each petal and the pollen grains. Digital zoom would take a normal (un-zoomed) photo of the entire flower arrangement, but to "zoom" it will actually just crop and enlarge the bit with the flower.

In short, digital zoom is "cheat" zoom. It does not let you use your camera's full resolution, and the quality with an optical zoom will always be much, much better. So, when buying a new digital camera, you can essentially ignore any stats about digital zoom, and pay attention only to the optical zoom figures.