Zoom Lens

For beginners through advanced amateurs your digital camera will likely have a fixed zoom lens.  You will find these rated with a combination of “Optical” and “Digital” zoom values.  Though the digital zoom will sometimes be useful to you, the optical zoom is much more important.  The optical zoom value represents the physical ability of the lens to zoom in on the subject.  The larger this value the more expensive the lens and likely the camera as a whole.

The digital zoom represents the camera's computerized ability to expand the lens' physical zoom ability.  This is done by internally expanding the area of a pixel, like making an enlargement.  For instance, your camera may take 2 million pixels in the center of your picture and spread them over the 5 million pixels used to store a picture.  Just like with enlargements, this can result in some blurriness.

Much of the time the difference in cost between digital cameras is the quality of the zoom lens. Though the quality of the plastic zoom lenses found in inexpensive cameras is very good, more expensive cameras have a glass zoom lens.

Both simple and complex digital cameras come with automatic focusing that can be overridden for special situations.  Generally, the automatic focusing can handle anything from 20 inches away to long distances.  Most simple and all complex digital cameras have a “Close-Up” override setting allowing you to focus on a object as close as three inches away.  Many complex digital cameras also have a “Long Distance” override setting that sets the focus at infinity, providing for even sharper distance (scenic) pictures.

Nearly all digital cameras that come with a built-in flash have a variety of settings including the ability to reduce the “red eye” effect.  Most have an “Automatic” and “Automatic Red-Eye” settings that allow the camera to determine if the flash is used.  Naturally, you will also find “On”, “On Red-Eye” and “Off” settings.  The “Red-Eye” settings cause the flash to go off twice, once just before the picture is taken (to cause the eye's iris to close, preventing the red reflection) and a second time for the actual taking of the picture.