skates=grafs
Join Date: May 2005
Location: New York
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Hey guys,
I just recieved a new camera that I purchased off of Circuit City's web site (Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5). I am by no means a photographer, but I do enjoy taking pictures and video of friends and family whenever I can (who doesn't?)...just a casual point and shooter. Anyway -- this camera had everything I was looking for. It is compact (camera next to mouse), can take nice wide screen 16:9 pictures (along with 4:3 and 3:2), can shoot 720p HD video, and packs in an amazing 10x optical zoom for its size. However, I'm curious about this feature called "Extended Optical Zoom". The manual says that with extended optical zoom I can hit up to 16.9x and it seems it lowers the resolution of the picture to 2MP in order to get the 16.9x zoom...my question is -- is this a "fake" zoom? How does it differ from traditional digital zoom (which it also has, but is off by default...I don't usually use digital zoom when taking pictures)? Here are some pictures of my driveway with the various zoom: Sample Pics. There are four shots which represent 1x, 5x, 10x, and 16.9x respectively. The 16.9x shot looks good (to my untrained eyes, mind you) so I'm not really sure what's going on here. Last edited by MBHockey : 2008-07-24 at 14:04. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Paris, France
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Digital zooms and Extended Optical Zooms or anything of the sort are "fake" in the sense that they don't reveal more detail. In other words, they don't do anything that you can't do equally well or better in post-processing.
Digital zooms work by cropping the central portion of the image, then resampling it to create an image with a higher pixel count. The result is a large, soft image. The Extended Optical Zoom on your camera also crops the centre of the image, but unlike the digital zoom, doesn't resample at a higher pixel count. The result is a small, sharp image with the same amount of detail that the digital zoom would have provided, in a smaller file. Digital zooms aren't totally without value for novices because:
If you view your 10x and 16.9x sample images at 100% on-screen, you'll notice they both contain the same detail: the 16.9x version is merely a cropped version of the former (which of course you could do on your computer). You'll also note though that the camera did a better job of metering the bright road at the end of the drive in the 16.9x version, simply because it forms a larger part of the frame. The file is 1.5 MB versus 4.3 MB. So those shots are a perfect example of the pluses and minuses of the feature. |
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skates=grafs
Join Date: May 2005
Location: New York
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Thank you very much for that explanation...really helpful!
I talked with a guy at Circuit City about it and he was less knowledgable than I was. He claimed that the extended zoom was truly 16.9x optical zoom, so I asked him why they don't advertise it as a 16.9x optical zoom digital camera instead of 10x...he didn't have an answer. It's shocking the amount of misinformation they give out...I know very little about cameras but knew enough to realize it wasn't a real optical zoom and that he was full of it. It would have been cool if you were there to put him in his place |
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Thunderbolt, fuck yeah!
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Denmark
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What's the frame rate on that 720p video?
My new Powershot G9 does 1024*768 video, but it drops to 15 fps compared to the usual 30 fps at 640*480. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Jan 2005
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Paris, France
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Quite, ezkcdude. Then everyone including the seller and the consumer would also know exactly what it does. But I think that's somewhat the point: to confuse the heck out of the public so that they keep upgrading.
Anyway, congrats on your new camera, MBHockey. I'm also trying to decide what new camera to get at the moment. |
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skates=grafs
Join Date: May 2005
Location: New York
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