Optical Zoom on Picture Quality?

Myriam Hetjonk: Having a high optical zoom only means that your camera has a large amount of magnification (maybe like 8x). However, high amounts of zoom can actually hurt your images because of the distortion common in high zoom lenses. This is why professionals tend to only use prime lenses (fixed length). These lenses have no zoom, but produce images of the utmost quality.However, this distortion is not that noticeable accept in architectural shots, and can be mostly corrected in Photoshop....Show more

Rona Ising: The optical zoom does not improve picture quality. It mechanically zooms into the picture (altering the lens i think) seemingly bringing the image closer. If you use digital zoom, this lowers the quality of the picture as it is just making the pixels bigger (like wen u zoom in on a picture on your computer screen.)So no it doesnt improve quality but if you have a higher optical zoom you can zoom in without losing quality...Show more

Bethany Blocke! r: Sam D has hit it right on the head. I am in the researching process of purchasing a digital camera and my mentor told me the same thing. I guess this is common knowledge to all but we Luddites.

Rose Krouse: Optical zoom *can* have an effect on photo quality, though not in a good way. It really depends on the quality of the lens. But even the most expensive zoom lenses will usually display at least some amount of what is called pincushion and barrel distortion at the extremes of the zoom range. You will usually not notice it except at the edges of the frame, or sometimes if there are lots of vertical lines in the photos they can appear distorted. Zoom lens quality has improved greatly over the years, though a prime, (single focal length), lens will always have the best image quality... all other things being equal. steve...Show more