Digital zoom vs post enlargement

I have an FZ1000 and while shooting wild life, 400 mm is sometimes not enough. I use izoom which theoretically doubles the focal length while cropping the sensor. However I am curious if pushing beyond I Zoom to digital zoom 1600 mm deteriorates the image quality more than shooting at 800 and then enlarge with image processing software.

Nywrecker said:

I have an FZ1000 and while shooting wild life, 400 mm is sometimes not enough. I use izoom which theoretically doubles the focal length while cropping the sensor. However I am curious if pushing beyond I Zoom to digital zoom 1600 mm deteriorates the image quality more than shooting at 800 and then enlarge with image processing software.

Click to expand...

Why enlarge in post-processing, rather than just cropping? Unless ii's going to a high res printer, enlarging probably won't make the image look any better.

Nywrecker said:

I have an FZ1000 and while shooting wild life, 400 mm is sometimes not enough. I use izoom which theoretically doubles the focal length while cropping the sensor. However I am curious if pushing beyond I Zoom to digital zoom 1600 mm deteriorates the image quality more than shooting at 800 and then enlarge with image processing software.

Click to expand...

Short answer is that digital zoom is the most distorted and is the least recommended with iZoom being somewhat better. Using software is assumed to be better than in-camera digital zoom as the computer has more processing power to use different algorithms to make intelligent decisions rather than just straight pixel doubling.

I use iZoom all the time but never go into digital zoom because once it is turned on the camera will just slip right past iZoom territory and into digital zoom before I know it. Always looking for that extra reach. ;-)

So then it is just up to you as to what level of quality you want or need.

I would not use the Digital Zoom on FZ1000. Instead, using iZoom can produce acceptable images (in good light conditions).

Some forumers reported positive experience when using Extra Optical Zoom at 10Mpx. Worth trying it.

The best thing is to shoot up to 400mm optical zoom and then crop.

Hi Nigel, you are correct, I meant cropping, not enlarging.

tks

Avian2016 said:

I would not use the Digital Zoom on FZ1000. Instead, using iZoom can produce acceptable images (in good light conditions).

Some forumers reported positive experience when using Extra Optical Zoom at 10Mpx. Worth trying it.

The best thing is to shoot up to 400mm optical zoom and then crop.

Click to expand...

I use extra optical zoom quite a lot with my TZ200 which is the same size sensor and the results are really good!

Dave

Nywrecker said:

I have an FZ1000 and while shooting wild life, 400 mm is sometimes not enough. I use izoom which theoretically doubles the focal length while cropping the sensor.

Click to expand...

Both Extra Optical Zoom and iZoom crop the sensor to narrow the field of view. The difference being that Extra Optical Zoom is a pure crop with a resulting fewer pixels. iZoom takes it a step further by increasing the number of pixels back up to 20MP while interpolating between them to fill in the jagged gaps that standard digital zoom creates.

Nywrecker said:

However I am curious if pushing beyond I Zoom to digital zoom 1600 mm deteriorates the image quality more than shooting at 800 and then enlarge with image processing software.

Click to expand...

Digital zoom simply enlarges the pixels with no real gain. I wouldn't waste my time using it. Enlarging with post-processing software, however, has the advantage of better interpolating algorithms and processing power and should improve on what iZoom can do. But I wouldn't apply it on top of iZoom.

--
Bruce
You learn something new every time you press the shutter