November 17

Video Camera Basics: Optical and Digital Zoom Lenses Compared

Zooming in and out with your video camera is fun for most video camera enthusiasts. Zooming is also a useful function that gives you the ability to get a variety of shots from one location. There are two ways to zoom a modern video camera.

  • Optical zoom
  • Digital zoom

There is a HUGE difference between optical zoom and digital zoom.

zoom lens cross section drawing
You can see the many difference glass lens elements in this cross-section drawing of a zoom lens.

Optical Zoom – Optical zoom is just that, optical. An optical zoom lens works by using movement of the many glass elements that are inside the zoom lens.  The illustration shows a cross-section of a zoom lens.

How much zoom you have is expressed in multipliers. A camcorder with a 10x zoom can bring a distant object about two times closer than a camera with a 5x zoom. A “long” zoom lens allows you to zoom in to objects that are far away, so you can get a close-up.

A digital zoom is not accomplished with the lens elements moving, rather it is a digital magnification of the picture by zooming in on a select group of pixels.

Needless to say, an optical lens would have some physical length to it, whereas the lens on a digital zoom camera does not have all these elements, so is small and flat looking.

Optical Zoom and digital zoom are two different ways to zoom. Optical zoom gives you a much higher quality picture than digital zoom.

What’s the difference?

  • Digital zoom really just magnifies pixels. Digital zoom is much like zooming in on the picture during editing. You lose resolution because a smaller number of pixels make up the picture.
  • With optical zoom, you do not lose resolution and the quality of the individual lens elements determines your quality. A cheap zoom lens will always look a touch fuzzy on full zoom, but it will still get you that close-up without getting in someone’s face and being rude.  A high quality zoom lens will be sharply focused even when fully zoomed in.

 

video camera lens

 

Although sales people at the big box stores will swear digital zoom is awesome, it’s really not.

Optical zoom should be considered when buying a camera, but digital zoom isn’t a feature worth using except in very dire circumstances.

Home model camcorders generally come with a 10x optical zoom. That’s enough to get a decent close-up of somebody across the street.

I hope this information helps you decide which camcorder is right for you.

Lorraine Grula

video crew with teacher


Tags

digital zoom, how zoom lenses work, optical zoom, optical zoom and digital zoom compared, video camera zoom lenses, video cameras optical zoom digital zoom, what is the difference between optical and digital zoom


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