August 9, 2011 By

Smartphone Photography – Optical & Digital Zoom

1152202081nhk20Very few cameras come without the ability to zoom. The question is, how they zoom?

Standalone cameras will normally have a optical zoom, whereby the lens extends and twists to magnify in on a subject.

They will too have a digital zoom, whereby it digitally zooms into the image further. This is what is found on smartphones.

Where possible do not use digital zoom, get closer to the subject or take the picture from further away and then crop it.  You do not have to but you get best results this way.

Digital zooming has its place but on a smartphone due to the lower quality camera lens the image will often look really grainy.

Image: Graeme Weatherston / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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About Jon

Constantly challenging opinions and looking for new opportunities, Jon develops the product ranges and business activities and very much strives to maintaining growth and taking Clove in to the future.

Never knowing when to stop, he spends too much time in the office! He's very organised; writes lists, reports, spreadsheets, you name it, he's on to it!! When he does relax, however, he can be found driving his pride and joy (his Range Rover Sport), walking his Dog, down the pub or at a local restaurant. He does too like the finer things in life and often lives beyond his means, only the best hotels will do.

Comments

  1. Ian says:
    August 9, 2011 at 3:11 pm

    Isn’t the graininess on digitally zoomed images due to the interpolation/resampling system they use to increase the pixel size of the cropped image, rather than the optics? I never use optical zoom, as it doesn’t actually give you any more image information than cropping, but I’m not sure how the lens makes a difference between the two approaches?