How Good Is Digital Zoom Nowadays? Enough To Ignore A Limited Optical Zoom?

[kidrow]

Hey all,

So while casually reading up on advanced compacts/bridge cameras, I came across a few Youtube videos which showed the digital zoom capabilities of cameras such as the Sony RX100 or the Panasonic FZ1000.

Now, these are a far cry from the digital "zoom" (aka crop) that I have on my only digicam, the Panasonic LZ8.

So, is it as good as it seems? Does digital zoom not equate to digital crop anymore? Can it be equated to optical zoom?

What's the tech behind it? What conditions does it "break" under? What are its limitations? Do particular brands do a better job than others?

Should a limited optical zoom, like in the Sony RX100, not be considered a deal-breaker anymore?

Thanks for your time.

 

[booo]

It is very subjective actually. The quality of the image highly depends on the quality of lens. which basically means whether you have a fixed lens or zoom lens the quality depends on how sharp the lens is. once you have a sharp image you can crop it with meaningful pictures. this is what most of the wildlife photographers do. they buy a long fixed focal length with high megapixel camera and the crop the image to the taste.

now coming to the sharpness, color reproduction, bokeh, low light performance, aperture, aspherical, apochromatic (fringing) and the other features usually collectively known as "image quality" of the lenses; fixed focal length lenses are usually come with exceptional quality. where as the zoom lenses give you average quality over the entire zoom range.

Coming to cameras like RX1(not RX100) and leica Q etc... have a fixed focal length lens but those lenses are usually engineered for exceptional quality.

Sony series's lenses are usually designed by carl zeiss who are legendary when it comes to lens design. (like the f0.7 lens they made for NASA used in Stanley Kubric's Barry Lyndon)
Leica make their own lenses and they are known to be legendary too. (f0.9 Noctilux for leica system)
Minolta used to some legendary lenses too. (like my beloved Rokkor lenses)
Cosina Voigtlaender makes great lenses too. btw, Cosina manufactures Zeiss lenses.
Chinese manufacturers like Rokkinon, ZY Optics, SLR Magic make good lenses too.
Canon and Nikon make their own lenses which are costly.
Sigma and tamron make canon nikon lenses.
Panasonic's lenses are made by Leica mostly. (Like LZ8's lens)
Fuji makes their own lenses (Fujinon)

Now coming to the quality of sensor...
Sony makes their own sensors
Nikon uses sony's sensors
Canon makes their own sensors.
other brands I dont know much.

now coming to the sensor sizes...thumb rule is that bigger the sensor the better:
1. low light capability
2. depth of field
3. other factors of image quality like noise, color etc...

so, no matter how good the sensor is, you wont be able to get much of bokeh (depth of field) from a smartphone camera.
most of the P&S cameras have very small sensors compared to DSLRs. RX100 has 1inch sensor which is bigger than most of the other p&s cameras.
full frame cameras have 35mmX24mm sensors.
medium format cameras have even bigger sensors. like Pentax 645Z, Hassleblad etc...
Large format cameras have even bigger sensors. 6inchX6inch or 12inchX6inch. but these are usually film cameras. (keyword is lomography)

coming back to your question on whether lack of zoom is a deal breaker or not...
in real life; zoom doesnt mean shit. if you are able to click the titty of a person it wont look beautiful until you frame your picture nicely and be able to have depth of field etc... and also have some perspective into the picture. so zoom in itself dont make sense.
now if you want to take pictures of flying birds or valentino rossi on his M1, you will need really huge lenses and a lot of other gear like fast aperture, image stabilization etc... which you cannot incorporate in small pocket cameras so its a no go there too.
now, if you have something like 3-4x zoom, is it good to have it and compromise the image quality or to have a fixed lens and then get better image quality?

I would consider that its better to have a fixed camera with exceptional image quality with all the features to make it ease of use for the user than to have 20x optical zoom (without IS). because in real life if I want a p&s i want to take pictures without hassle and yet of good quality.

 

[nitant]

At the end of the day Digital Zoom is as good Image Resizing.

Algorithms will sharpen the image and simulate something that looks natural, but you can't recreate details that the lens doesn't capture.

It will never ever be as good as optical zoom. No matter what the marketing people try to tell you.

 

[kidrow]

@booo So if I understand correctly, what you're saying is that the quality of the digitally zoomed image would depend on the quality of the initial capture. So, Sony's 'Clear Image Zoom' would provide better results on an A6000 than on an RX100 (assuming that the Aps-c sensor has better iq compared to the 1" sensor). Or are you simply saying that the digital zoom doesn't matter.

I get your point about quality of the sensor, lens, its speed, AF speed etc., & the trade-offs that one has to decide on, but I'm not sure I understand what your opinion is on the digital zoom front?

If you were thrown off by my statement that the limited zoom on the RX100 is a deal-breaker, then let me just say that I meant it merely as an example, or as a hypothetical case.

@nitant I take it then, that in your opinion, it's no different than using a post-processing program/plugin that adds pixels based on certain algorithms. Sure, digital zoom is not going to surpass optical zoom. But what I was trying to get at was, is it much more passable/tolerable now?

Thanks for your replies. I guess the fact that I have really old hardware, & haven't kept in touch with the upscaling post=processing algorithms made me think that there's been some sort of breakthrough on the digital zoom front. Guess I was wrong. (Having said that though, there are a few people who are quite happy with the RX100's digital zoom, judging by posts on dpreview.)

 

[booo]

but I'm not sure I understand what your opinion is on the digital zoom front.

For me, there is no "digital zoom". only crop. Get a high megapixel camera (22+) and then crop images if required.

So, if you with a camera if I want closer shot, I get closer. as in walk closer to the subject rather than zooming for me lenses like 24-240 dont make sense unless I want to shoot motogp.

now coming to sony's clear zoom. it could be due to very good post processing on camera hardware. but then you can do much better using photoshop any day so for people like me it doesnt really matter.

 

[kidrow]

^Thanks for your thoughts.

 

[blr_p]

Now, these are a far cry from the digital "zoom" (aka crop) that I have on my only digicam, the Panasonic LZ8.

So, is it as good as it seems? Does digital zoom not equate to digital crop anymore?

It's been good enough for phone cameras since the S4. The trick is not to go overboard with it.

Can it be equated to optical zoom?

Never, because its a crop of a fixed fov. cant substitute the compression and stretching that happens optically with digital. Different focal lengths can alter the relation of the size and relative distance that objects in the foreground have with the background in an image. Optical zoom isn't merely about magnifying things, it compresses things that are behind and makes them appear closer than they actually are in reality. On the wider end it can make things appear bigger in the foreground and push the background further out. This is all illusion and nothing to do with reality but is interesting from a composition perspective. If you know what you want you can dramatically alter the way a scene appears by changing focal lengths.

What's the tech behind it? What conditions does it "break" under? What are its limitations? Do particular brands do a better job than others?

Interpolation has become better, there are many straight lines in life that can be filled in. With phones you can go up to 2x, with bigger sensors you might be able to push that to 4x. See the 1020 or 808.

Should a limited optical zoom, like in the Sony RX100, not be considered a deal-breaker anymore?

Don't understand ? for portraits a limited optical zoom is perfect, it means you don't have to crop as its done in camera.

funny this thread should come up as i read this article yesterday which dates back to 2013. Useful under 'certain conditions' is the caveat.

 

[kidrow]

Don't understand ? for portraits a limited optical zoom is perfect, it means you don't have to crop as its done in camera.

funny this thread should come up as i read this article yesterday which dates back to 2013. Useful under 'certain conditions' is the caveat.

Thanks for your thoughts.

'Limited zoom' is from the perspective of a tourist who'd like an all-round compact with decent iq but enough zoom (say 200mm equiv) for situations that require it.

'Useful under certain conditions' seems to be about right.

 

[superczar]

'Useful under certain conditions' seems to be about right.

I'd say it has of late become more of "Useful under most conditions " - With screen resolutions typically at 1920x1080 and given very few end users actually print an image at large size, the end result from a crop from a half decent camera is actually more than usable
Here is a sample random pic - 1st is Cropped and 2nd is uncropped (but resized for an apples to apples comparison)
If one were to take a pic with the intention of cropping it out at the center, the end result would be better

 

[blr_p]

'Limited zoom' is from the perspective of a tourist who'd like an all-round compact with decent iq but enough zoom (say 200mm equiv) for situations that require it.

This is a niche case where a 10x zoom can be useful. But it comes with the compromise that the aperture reduces by at least 2 stops at full zoom. This means your ISO quadruples and how well noise is handled by the sensor becomes important at higher ISO. So travel zooms come with the requirement that light must be adequate to get the benefit of optical zoom, that is if you don't spend more and get a bigger sensor camera which has lenses that don't reduce aperture to that extent seen in compacts.

Ensure it allows to manually set shutter speeds and the camera comes with decent OIS otherwise its use will be reduced when light isn't adequate. Setting a slow shutter when using a tripod for a static subject will allow to get a lower ISO and better IQ than otherwise possible. I say static because optical zoom works against you when there is movement. the more you optically zoom the faster the shutter has to be to freeze the subject (if you want that). This occurs for two reasons, more pixels are now moving across the frame AND the aperture is reducing the amount of light you need to get that faster shutter. This means you push up ISO which introduces more noise.

rx100 is good for people situations and where you don't need too much zoom. It tops out at 3x, if you use digital you can push it to 5x. But it wont work beyond.

 

[blr_p]

I'd say it has of late become more of "Useful under most conditions " - With screen resolutions typically at 1920x1080 and given very few end users actually print an image at large size, the end result from a crop from a half decent camera is actually more than usable
Here is a sample random pic - 1st is Cropped and 2nd is uncropped (but resized for an apples to apples comparison)
If one were to take a pic with the intention of cropping it out at the center, the end result would be better

View attachment 57872

View attachment 57873

Interesting, these were taken with the fujifilm X-E1. Compact form factor. Mirrorless allows for interchangeable lenses ie more general purpose. How has your experience been with it ?

 

[superczar]

Interesting, these were taken with the fujifilm X-E1. Compact form factor. Mirrorless allows for interchangeable lenses ie more general purpose. How has your experience been with it ?

Quite good actually
It has practically replaced my Sony SLR (which I incidentally was using with SAL35f14g, a fabulous lens to say the least) as well as the rx100 which I preferred to carry due to its small form factor
The PQ is incidentally better even than the former, especially in poor light
On the flip side, The AF performance is nowhere as good as the Sony SLR and of course, the form factor is nowhere as small as the RX100 (but of course a lot less than the former) - But the PQ more than makes up for it
Using it with a XF18-55/2.8-4 and a XF35/f1.4 lens - Both are brilliantly sharp edge to edge

 

[blr_p]

Yes, slower at AF means longer shot to shot times, otherwise there is quite a cult following for the fuji mirrorless.

Is this something the OP could consider ?

because going on vacation is just a change of lens instead of body.

 

[booo]

AF means longer shot to shot times

For me AF doesnt make much sense except for continuous tracking. My experience is that whenever I took time to focus and photo, it usually turns out good. run and gun usually gives me either getting unintended areas in focus like forehead/tip of nose instead of eyes etc.. There are certain situations where you want to take a photo without looking. even in such cases I use the range finder markings and then set higher dof and then click. its a little painful but works decently. you cant do that with AF lenses since most of them dont have those rangefinder markings.
Though I have 28-70 sony lens I use my manual leses due to this. ofcourse there is IQ issue with 28-70.

 

[chiron]

On a related note I've seen some really impressive looking 4k framegrabs from the FZ1000 in dpreview forums. Pretty much redefines run & gun. Also many of these 1" and bigger sensor cameras nowadays also seem to give acceptable output with 2-4x digital magnification.

 

[blr_p]

On a related note I've seen some really impressive looking 4k framegrabs from the FZ1000 in dpreview forums. Pretty much redefines run & gun.

Its an option even on a phone to get that perfect shot without the hassle but there has to be enough light.

 

[kidrow]

Thanks for all your replies.

I'd say it has of late become more of "Useful under most conditions " ........
Here is a sample random pic - 1st is Cropped and 2nd is uncropped (but resized for an apples to apples comparison)

Just to be clear, is that a crop in-camera or in post? If in post, would it be possible to take another sample with Fuji's digi zoom algorithm?

......

Is this something the OP could consider ?

I'm not exactly looking to buy a camera right now. The intended trip is more of a khayaali pulao & may or may not happen. I just decided to casually look through the camera options so I'm better prepared, if the need arises. That's what led me to those posts/videos showing off digital zoom, & I got curious. So this thread.

Just stating that explicitly so that you or any of the others don't waste too much time elaborating on the pros & cons of any particular cameras or camera systems. I don't mean to say at all that the detailed replies are not appreciated. Just that i don't want anyone to later feel like they have unnecessarily wasted their time

because going on vacation is just a change of lens instead of body.

Having said all of that, , since you mention interchangeable lenses, how practical is changing lenses on a trip in reality?

The m43 system with an all-in-one lens (like a 14-140mm) seems ideal for vacations. But of course, the all-in-one pushes the cost up. So how easy &/or practical is changing lenses really?

 

[booo]

The intended trip is more of a khayaali pulao & may or may not happen. I just decided to casually look through the camera options so I'm better prepared, if the need arises.

If you want to take photography seriously, choosing a camera/lens highly dependent on the type of photography you want to do.
you have to make a choice on what you want to shoot, or in other works "choose what you don't want to shoot".
for example wild life requires high speed and high focal length cameras where as portraiture requires other stuff. Street photography requires something different.
journalism requires some other type of gear.

how practical is changing lenses on a trip in reality?

Changing lenses is pretty straight forward if you know how to clean your stuff. cleaning camera sensor and lenses in mirrorless is pretty straight forward if you have the right gear like dry brush and proper solvents. for example I use a dry brush(compressed inert air can) instead of rocket blower, contact lens cleaning fluid, ear buds and cheap toilet paper (toilet paper was the best lint free stuff I found after few experiments)
Also powerful led torch

if you cant do this, its better you dont change lenses often.

 

[chiron]

If you go on a trek then you'd want candids of your group, landscapes and wildlife. Where is the choosing not to in that?

 

[singenaadam]

Unless you are very keen on photography, smaller cameras like Rx100 the like make much better practical sense. If you don't want to carry even that then there are phones like PureView.

Most of the time, we are no longer printing. If one needs to print, again for most of the cases, the crop from a premium/prosumer compact is much more than enough.

When you decide on a SLR, effectively you add an extra bag to your trip. Camera+extra battery+lenses+charger+++. Thus the camera itself can become a literal pain-in-the-neck / shoulder. Not to mention, the nice logos like LowePro etc., are magnets for thieves!