To zoom or to zoom further, that is the question.
The best camera phones are taking better pictures than ever, grabbing loads of detail in photos, shooting 4K and even 8K video, and delivering more zoom than the most versatile DSLR lenses. But not all camera zooms use the same technology, and there are more powerful types of zoom than others. With terms like digital zoom, optical zoom, telephoto, and periscope being used – it can be confusing, but it doesn’t need to be. Let’s start with some terminology. First up – telephoto simply means a camera lens that has a far reach – no actual zooming required. Next, it’s helpful to briefly spec up on digital zoom and optical zoom. Digital zoom simply crops into a photo and has been used in digital cameras for decades. Digital zooms don’t really have anything to do with the camera’s lens – there’s no actual optical magnification going on. It’s all in the software. As a result, even if the zoom feature wasn’t available in the camera, you could emulate a digital zoom by simply cropping a photo. Naturally, the more you crop, the lower the quality of the photo you end up with. A 12MP photo, for example, would turn into a 3MP photo if you digitally zoomed or cropped into it, thereby degrading quality. Generally speaking, therefore, digital zoom is the less desirable type of zoom. The second type of zoom – optical zoom – is widely seen as better. Using optics (hence the name), your camera lens magnifies the image that lands on its sensor. Why does optical zoom deliver more detail? Because the zoomed image is captured by the whole sensor – so while a 12MP three times digital zoom image would be reduced to about 4MP, a 12MP three times optical zoom image would be a full 12MP. Okay, we’re done with camera zoom terminology 101. It’s almost time to talk about 2019 – the year of the periscope camera. But before diving into periscope zoom tech, we need to understand how zoom lenses work. The further a camera lens is from the sensor, the further the reach of the camera or the more ‘telephoto’ it is. This logic is kind of like a telescope – extend the telescope > increase the distance between the lens and your eye > see further into the distance.
