Digital Camera tips and advice

A Digital Camera Feature You Should NOT Use

Most new digital camera arrive with a ton of features. There is however one feature you should deactivate the moment you take your new camera out of the box, the digital zoom.

Using the digital zoom is a guaranteed way to mess up your photos. Camera manufacturers have conveniently added digital zoom so that when you reach the limit of your optical zoom range the camera automatically slides into digital zoom mode, as if to help you out.

Digital zoom does not help you, it is not your friend. Sure, when you’re caught in the moment and you’re zooming in on that once-in-a-lifetime shot, digital zoom brings you in even closer. You feel pretty good about capturing that special picture, until you take a close-up look at the photo…

Hey, what the %$#! Why does the quality of my picture stink?

Welcome to the world of digital zoom.

The reason your picture stinks is that digital zoom does NOT use the lens of your camera to move closer, it uses cheater software to digitally enlarge a portion of your picture. Now digital zoom looks good as a feature printed on the outside of the box of your new digital camera. It might say something like, “3x optical zoom, 4x digital, 12x total zoom.”

Yeah right! Here’s the truth - ignore the 12x total zoom. It’s strictly a camera manufacturers way to make the camera “appear” to have a very powerful zoom, in other words, deceptive advertising.

Our recommendation - pull out your owners manual and deactivate your cameras digital zoom. So now, even in the heat of the moment of taking pictures you won’t even accidentally slip into digital zoom.

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Notice the overall “softness” of the digital zoom photo? You think it looks bad on your screen wait until you try to print it.

Now you may be able to get away with this IF you are only going to look at your photos on your computer monitor. However, if you decide to print pictures shot in digital zoom be prepared to be disappointed.