General Photoshop & Dig. Cam question

[B_Rock9]

Hello all.....
Quick question.
When a dig. camera has optical and digital zoom....what is the easiest way to utilize the dig. zoom using Photoshop? Do you just crop and enlarge??
Thanks for any insight!!

[Stuart Elflett]

OK, when a digital camera has optical and digital zoom, don't use the digital zoom - all you're going to achieve is dropping the quality of the image dramatically...

To digitally zoom using Photoshop, just crop to the image that you wish to have, and yes, if you must, enlarge the section... the better the routine you use to enlarge, the better your digital zoom will be...

Cheers,
Stuart

[Vinky]

Ohh my. Untruth #1 Digital zoom is not a zoom at all, it is cropping. You are not increasing the focal length of the lens or changing the perspective of the lens in forshortening the way a telephoto lens does.

2x digital zoom (crop) on a 4mp camera reduces the image to 2mp.
4x digital zoom (crop) on a 4mp camera reduces the image to 1mp.

[Stuart Elflett]

Don't know about the other manufacturers, but the Canon digital zoom simply takes the image you're capturing and crops into it by the zoom factor and then interpolates back to the image size you want - this is particularly frustrating if you're shooting with a G2, which could give 2272 X 1704, but only capturing a 1600 X 1200 image, the camera COULD just capture the middle 1600 X 1200 of the full image, but instead crops the middle out of it's processed 1600 X 1200 and interpolates back up... if it didn't 'digital zoom' at all people would shoot large and crop to zoom and have much better images...

That said, if all you're doing is shooting digital and getting the keepers printed from the memory card at a lab, the digital zoom CAN actually be useful - but if you're taking your images onto a PC ALWAYS turn the digital zoom off and shoot as large a high quality image as you can!!

Cheers,
Stuart