Interested in zoom..........

diggy415

I have a z650 and looking into getting closer to the action, with this built in 10 digital zoom i was wondering what this will do for me? Anyone have one, use it, any major difference?

http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=274&pq-locale=en_US

ian408

I'm gonna move this one over to cameras and see what happens.

Art Scott

diggy415 wrote:

I have a z650 and looking into getting closer to the action, with this built in 10 digital zoom i was wondering what this will do for me? Anyone have one, use it, any major difference?

http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=274&pq-locale=en_US

Never consider a camera by what it is claiming as a digital zoom.....the only good reference is the optical zoom.
Digital zoom is like a bad upsizing program....they never produce the quaility one is looking for in the upsized (digitally zoomed) photos....99.99999% of the time the photos turn out pixelated too the hilt.

mercphoto

diggy415 wrote:

I have a z650 and looking into getting closer to the action, with this built in 10 digital zoom i was wondering what this will do for me? Anyone have one, use it, any major difference?

http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=274&pq-locale=en_US

Its a 1.4X magnification. If you had a 100mm focal length before you now have 140mm of focal length. Noticeable but not huge. The before/after shots on that website above show you exactly what will happen, so I'm not sure what other info you really need.

Beware, though, of digital zoom. All you are doing is throwing away pixels. Digital zoom is worthless. You want optical zoom.

Rhuarc

And you can preform much better "digital zooms" using a program like Photoshop, where you get muich more control over how to enlarge the portion of the picture you want larger.

claudermilk

Art beat me to it. Digital zoom will only soften the image. I also ignore that stat, and in fact on my old 995 I locked out that function.

So, we are so far 100% in agreement that digital zoom is junk.

Art Scott

What is the optical zoom range of your Z650? The specs should give you both optical and digital.

ziggy53

Kodak EasyShare Z650 review:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/kodakZ650/

The Z650 has an "optical" zoom, equivalent to 38-380mm, so it is a "super zoom" camera. A 1.4x telextender would be interesting, but probably only useful on a tripod in plenty of light.

There is one time when in-camera digital zoom may beat later software interpolation (up-ressing).

If you have a comsumer digicam which only has a high compression JPG format available, moderate amounts of digital zoom may be preferable to later interpolation. The reason is that high compression JPG may induce visible aliasing which will only be exagerated by later interpolation. Since in-camera interpolation is performed on the RAW image (usually), it can have less artifacting overall, compared to post-processing. Only actual testing with the particular camera will tell which method is best.

I am in total agreement that "high" levels of digital zoom are never preferable.

ziggy53

Art Scott

ziggy53 wrote:

Kodak EasyShare Z650 review:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/kodakZ650/

The Z650 has an "optical" zoom, equivalent to 38-380mm, so it is a "super zoom" camera. A 1.4x telextender would be interesting, but probably only useful on a tripod in plenty of light.

There is one time when in-camera digital zoom may beat later software interpolation (up-ressing).

If you have a comsumer digicam which only has a high compression JPG format available, moderate amounts of digital zoom may be preferable to later interpolation. The reason is that high compression JPG may induce visible aliasing which will only be exagerated by later interpolation. Since in-camera interpolation is performed on the RAW image (usually), it can have less artifacting overall, compared to post-processing. Only actual testing with the particular camera will tell which method is best.

I am in total agreement that "high" levels of digital zoom are never preferable.

ziggy53

So essentially with that 1.4 TC attached you'd have a 53.2 to 532 lens and no digital zoom needed.....

j photog

speaking of zoom...
any thoughts on the Tamron 28-300?

ziggy53

Art Scott wrote:

So essentially with that 1.4 TC attached you'd have a 53.2 to 532 lens and no digital zoom needed.....

I doubt that it works very well at the wide end (lots of vignetting), but it probably works pretty well at the tele end. It may also reduce the effective aperture, but differently from a behind-the-lens converter.

ziggy53

mercphoto

ziggy53 wrote:

I doubt that it works very well at the wide end (lots of vignetting), but it probably works pretty well at the tele end. It may also reduce the effective aperture, but differently from a behind-the-lens converter.

It should reduce the effective aperature by one stop, just as a 1.4X behind-the-lens converter will. Both crop the image and reduce the total light hitting the sensor. Where the converter is is not relevant.