Is the Sony DSC HX100V a Digital Zoom Camera?

by Ateev
(Mathura)

I am planning to buy Sony HX100V camera. But I want to know that is it a digital zoom camera or not?

Answer:

Ateev,

The Sony DSC-HX100V is a digital camera that has both optical and digital zoom. It has a 30X optical zoom lens that gives you a 35mm equivalent focal range of 29-870mm when shooting in the 16:9 ratio mode or 27-810mm when shooting with in the 4:3 ratio mode.

In addition to the excellent optical zoom the HX100V also has a built in digital zoom feature. There are two different digital zoom modes on this camera. The first is "Smart Zoom" and the second is the "Precision Digital Zoom". Of course Sony also provides a way of turning the digital zoom completely off as well.

The magnification available from the digital zoom feature depends upon the resolution setting on the camera. According to Sony Specifications using a 10mp image setting will give you up to 37X zoom using the "digital smart zoom". This increases as the resolution decreases so if you were to capture a 2mp image you could get the a total of 72X times zoom using the Digital Smart Zoom feature.

While the Sony DSC-HX100V does have digital zoom built in, I highly recommend that you do not use the digital zoom feature because it quickly degrades the image quality. All digital zoom does is to digitally enlarge one part of the overall image captured by the cameras image sensor.

Digital zoom of any type is notorious for reducing the image quality that is captured and I highly recommend you resist using that feature.

Regards,
Alan