Digital zoom on A95

[Newbie]

I know, I know... it is not recomended to use the digital zoom because it degrades the quality of the picture...

If I shoot a picture in 5MP resolution and that I use the digital zoom, what will be the megapixel equivelent of my photo(since it is degraded by digital zoom) ?

Here are the values of the digital zoom(it would be appreciated to have a megapixel equivalent for each):

3.8
4.9
6.1
7.6
9.3
12

[Ant]

I'm not entirely sure I understand what you're asking. A 5MP pic remains a 5MP pic regardless of the digital zoom.

Also, using digital zoom....Don't do it..ever, under any circumstances. If you really need to zoom a photo digitally do it with image editing software after you've taken the pic with optical zoom.

[Newbie]

What I meant is... if you use the digital zoom, the quality of the picture will degrade, so it will be the equivalent of a picture of how many megapixel...

Like, if I am not mistaken, using the digital zoom to 12x, will produce a picture of equivalent quality of a picture 640x480... The picture will be bigger, but printed, the quality will be the same as 640x480

[Ant]

Sorry. I've no idea.

[Wayne Knight]

Assuming that the maximum optical zoom is 3x, here are the values.

3.8x (3.11 megapixels)
4.9x (1.87 megapixels)
6.1x (1.21 megapixels)
7.6x (0.78 megapixels)
9.3x (0.52 megapixels)
12x (0.31 megapixels)

So you see, when you use the maximum digital zoom, the resulting picture will be the equivalent of 0.31 megapixels blown up, or an image about 648x486 blown up.

[minox]

I recommend to buy the lens adaptor and a converter lens.
there is not only the canon 2x lense out there (which gives you 6x optical zoom @ 5M) but other companies as well. Just make sure the lens is designed for 5M resolution as some cheaper ones are not...

[Newbie]

Thanks,

I wanted to know because I tried to see what my camera was able to do... so I put it on the table and took a picture using the digital zoom until I got 12x zoom. Took a picture and printed it on a 4x6 paper. And to be honnest the result wasn't bad at all, there was pixelisation, but without any interpolation this is the result of a shot taken at the equivalent of 456mm, quite a lot of zoom... Of course I'll never use the digital zoom, but I still know I can crop quite a bit and still keep good picture quality.