DO NOT PAY ATTENTION TO DIGITAL ZOOM. This is a feature that is a throw-back to the digital camcorder world. It's one thing to have a 15X digital zoom on a moving image since the eye can't detect just how bad the image is, but when you are looking at a snapshot of a moment in time the image quality associated with the digital zoom is just terrible. A big digital zoom factor essentially cuts the sides, top and bottom off of a picture and keeps it the same size. This produced a 'dithered' image.
The picture below was taken using the full 3X optical zoom as well as the 4X digital zoom of my camera. Please note the grass above the plovers head -- the grass is essentially a series of white-green boxes. The bird was about 40-50 feet away (and it's small). This is an extreme example of the affects of digital zoom on image quality.
You should only consider the OPTICAL ZOOM when you are looking at digital cameras. Optical zoom on a digital camera works much the same way that it does on a film camera with a varying focal length. Most mid-range cameras have between 2.5X and 4X optical zooms.
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