Quote:
Originally Posted by Dragonling
I'm not saying you're cropping the image. The camera is doing it digitally, just cutting down the image it's seeing to a smaller area. That's all digital zoom is. It reminds me a lot of the magical "ENHANCE" on cop dramas like CSI. I wish it worked that way...
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I wasn't saying that you were. I just put that in the earlier post in case anyone thought that it was just a cropped image.
I didn't buy this camera for the digital zoom, I bought it for the optical zoom. The fact that it has digital zoom will have it's own uses. Enough so that it can be just considered as icing to the cake. But having 24-2000mm OPTICAL zoom in a single package is something that I don't think ANY other camera or separate lens can provide at this time.
And I agree with you. As far as I know, computer technology hasn't advanced to the point where information in a photo can actually magically be created out of thin air. All such things do is to basically extrapolate a pixel between two or more others, and make an assumption about what it THINKS it is. So if you have a black dot and a white dot being spread apart by digital zooming, and the algorithm fills in, it will likely put in a gray dot. If in reality there was a green line there that TRUE optical magnification would show, there is no way for the algorithm to know this and put it in there. That's a simplified explanation, anyway.
To show yourself an example (for those that aren't familiar with this sort of thing) load up a graphics package and choose an image. Most graphics packages have a zoom tool, so zoom in till you have passed 1:1 and keep on going. Notice how blocky the image becomes? That is basically digital zoom. Of course, a lot depends on how the algorithm has been written as to how coarse that digital zooming looks to the eye.
The digital zoom on the P900 actually looks pretty decent in that the image does get softer, but I haven't noticed any particular blockiness yet the few times I have tried it. So all in all, I would have to say that quite likely more people will like it than people who will not. Or at least find it acceptable enough.