A300 without movie

Hi all!

I have seen the new CanonA300.
Just the type of camera i need. 3megapixel, 5X zoom.
But it would be great if it could cost $50 lesser.
S$399......... makes my thin wallet thinner.

Is there such a camera like the A300 tht costs $350?
i can do without the 3min video and the LCD.

thank you.

[Tweek]

don't think so...

btw, zoom on the A300 is DIGITAL zoom, not optical zoom. Digital zoom is considered useless by most people, as image quality suffers significantly.

zoom zoom zoom.... why are u in my room?


What is the difference between optical zoom and digital zoom?
In a previous thread, tweek said digital zoom is useless as it worsens the photo quality.......
are there any photo comparison that i can see?

Thanks.........

[shas3n]

Yes, dont buy A300 if you wish to have some zoom. I guess you must be able to find an used Oly-C350Z at your price. I remember seeing some ads on CS and HZ.
Alternatively, if you are not too keen on printing your photos, go to a 2MP cam like A60 etc.
All the best

[shas3n]

Quote: Originally posted by yunir_sg zoom zoom zoom.... why are u in my room? What is the difference between optical zoom and digital zoom? In a previous thread, tweek said digital zoom is useless as it worsens the photo quality....... are there any photo comparison that i can see? Thanks.........

Optical zoom is something like a binocular (monocular?) for the camera's CCD. It really makes things seem NEARer. Digital zoom is something like watching those small downloaded vedios in full screen on your monitor.
To elaborate, if u have 4x digital zoom, every pixel is translated into 4 pixels (2x2) so that you have a bigeer picture that does not really have any more detail than the small picture.
What your camera's digital zoom does, you can always do more efficiently on your computer. On the other hand, there is no substitute for optical zoom.

[Tweek]

optical zoom is when the lens elements actually move to change the focal length. The image projected onto the CCD is magnified optically by the lens.

digital zoom is when the camera does a software interpolation and blows up the image. Meaning, it will start to "guess" the extra pixels that are added to make the image look larger. Guess work is never accurate so image quality will degrade.

This is a scene taken at full wide-angle (no zoom):



These are crops of the above scene, taken with 3x optical zoom and simulated 3x digital zoom:



You can see that with optical zoom, the image is still sharp and details are retained. With digital zoom, artifacts appear and there are lots of pixelation, blotchiness and blurness. The digital zoom is simulated in photoshop, as I can't use digital zoom on my camera without using optical zoom first (which won't be 3x digital zoom anymore). But digital zoom on cameras work to a similar if not worse effect than this.

So if you want decent quality and need zoom, avoid looking at digital zoom specification on a camera.

WOW! Thank you......
I am truly grateful to you guys man!

thanks a lot!

LOve this community!