HQ Cams have less Zoom (10-12x) vs lowerquality cams, why?

[dman6666]

Assume because the lens needs to be a higher quality as well and picture would suffer?

[tWoSour]

no, the "bigger zoom" is a digital zoom, and not a real zoom. Digital zoom is a fake zoom of sorts, and degrades the quality of the image. Go zoom into something at 700x and see how shitty it looks, and also, try to hold that steady without a tripod!

If a 10x or 12x zoom wont fit your needs, you've got problems....

[thor300]

Cheaper cams have 18-22x zoom, digital zoom is never included there no matter what a camera cost (unless its a Trust or some other yalla-brand). Its about the optic quality, but for pure digital cams its also about the size of the CCD chip, with a smaller chip one can have much more zoom (for ex the Fujifilm finepix S5000, new very small chip, enormous optical zoom). In conventional photo you see the same regarding quality, for ex with Nikon lenses, a small cheap lens can have alot of zoom while an expensive 80-200mm with large quality lenses is 8-10 times bigger and heavier, or more. Still less zoom.

[dman6666]

Actually I am referring to Optical Zoom. I noticed (for example) all the newer 680K+ Effective pixel cameras have 10-12X Optical Zoom Max. whereas The Samsung Scd303 and Canon ZR85/90 have 20-22x Optical Zooms, but their effective pixels is 280-300K. So they have less overall resolution. Thus, I assume you need a higher quality lens for higher resolution cameras, or perhaps they feel digital zoom more than makes up for the difference... I dunno though, just thought I'd ask.

[Cobra]

The Samsung Scd303 and Canon ZR85/90 have 20-22x Optical Zooms, but their effective pixels is 280-300K.

If they've only got 280-300,000 pixels at that zoom, then it's a digital zoom. My Canon PowerShot A60 (£130) has 2 MILLION effective pixels, so it's a 2 megapixel camera. However, if I were to enable the digital zoom and not just optical the this would fall drastically as I zoomed in on the subject - you aren't zooming at all, you're just enlarging an area of the image.

Cobra

[thor300]

A digital stillpicture is much higher than digital videocams, the CCD chip of these are often only 540kilopixels, so the effective can be low even when not using digital zoom. Btw, I also got an A60, very good camera, damn solid too

[Cobra]

Sorry, just used a still camera for example, looking back I did word it badly. Can you imaging trying to compress a 1600 x 1200 pixel image at 25fps?

In answer to the original question, perhaps because the CCD must be smaller for a higher zoom the manufacturing process can't keep up economically and so the CCD has fewer pixels on it to allow money for the bigger zoom.

The A60 is an excellent performer and is built very well too. I'm very pleased with it.

Cobra

[dun4cheap]

If your talking optical lenses, then the data being process off the ccd will remain constant. I have the Canon EOS Digital Rebel and I love this camera. I have purchase the Canon 75-300mm Telefoto which functions very well but their are many factors with image quality. First off The further the object and the further you zoom the more steady your hand must be unless you have a $500 image stablizing lens. This can be very complicated. Further more lighting plays a huge factor. If you zooming in at 20x persay you need a lot of lighting or you need to adjust the shutter which in turn means your shooting on a tripod.