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.
