megs vs optical zoom

[infiniteatbest]

i've been looking to possibly buy a canon digital rebel xt or xti, but the optical zoom on digital SLRs usually range from 3x to 4x...while advanced cameras such as the canon powershot 6.0 meg and the kodak easyshare 6.1 and 7.1 have optical zooms that range from 10x-12x.

i really want a camera with a good zoom, but why do the SLRs only have 3x while advanced cameras have a much higher zoom?

that being said, i would also appreciate any reccomendations (preferably below $800).

thanks.

[John_Reed]

i've been looking to possibly buy a canon digital rebel xt or xti, but the optical zoom on digital SLRs usually range from 3x to 4x...while advanced cameras such as the canon powershot 6.0 meg and the kodak easyshare 6.1 and 7.1 have optical zooms that range from 10x-12x.

i really want a camera with a good zoom, but why do the SLRs only have 3x while advanced cameras have a much higher zoom?

that being said, i would also appreciate any reccomendations (preferably below $800).

thanks.Yes, these lenses usually included with a DSLR "kit" have zooms in the range you stated, but you can get more. That's the beauty of DSLRs, you can buy additional lenses to get as much zoom as you like. However, good long zooms are very expensive, so if your budget is a maximum of $800, you might need to confine your search to non-DSLR cameras, if you really feel you need the long zoom.

[BonjiB]

3x or 12x is subjective to the range on the lens... 10-30mm is 3x and 100-300mm is also 3x but they both cover VERY different focal lengths. That's what makes a dslr great is you don't have to settle for a "do it all" lens. You can buy a high quality 17-50mm lens (which is roughly 3x) and you can buy a high quality 70-200mm lens (which is also roughly 3x) which covers between the two your wide and your telephoto needs. THen you can just swap them out as you need to and not have to sacrifice quality in your photographs because you're stuck with a low quality 17-200mm "do it all" lens. The general rule is the easier it is to manufacture a lens... the better the image quality will be. It's easier to make a 17-50mm or a 70-200mm than it is to make a 17-200mm thus you're better off splitting your desired focal lengths up in to multiple lenses and attaining a higher image quality than opting for the convenience of a 'do it all' lens and sacrificing your ultimate image quality. Just my opinion.

[Riley]

Point and shoots use much smaller sensors. The Canon S3is for instance uses a 5.26 x 4.29mm sensor which is about a 4x crop from full frame cameras.

So a 400mm zoom on such a sensor would only be a 100mm on a full frame camera. But then, full frame are more difficult to get good fast wide angle coverage because of the comparitively more squat register (lens to film distance).

So zooms for full frame popularly go from a moderate wide of around 30 to 200mm, whereas P&S not uncommonly make 36 to 400 in bridging cameras like S3. The optical performance of the S3 would be somewhat compromised to achieve this, but it is necessary because the lens cannot be removed.



Riley