Zooming power is increasingly getting much attention when talking about smartphone camera specs.
But what exactly do they mean?
What is the underlying technology that powers each of them?
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How does it affect the quality of images your smartphone camera can produce?
And which of them should you look out for in a smartphone?
What Is Zooming In Smartphone Cameras?
Image Credit:Apple
That’s why you’ll often hear of terms like “zooming out.”
So, we’ll focus on the “zooming in” side of things.
But how exactly does zooming happen?
The longer the focal length, the more magnification.
Conversely, a shorter focal length gives you more angle-of-view but less magnification.
Alternatively, you’ve got the option to use a zoom lens.
Image Credit:Apple
Unfortunately, zoom lenses tend to be bulky.
In an era where consumers yearn for sleek-looking, slim phones, massive camera bumps would be a non-starter.
Nevertheless, zooming in must be achieved on smartphones.
Optical zoom is “zooming as zooming was meant to be.”
So each camera has a fixed focal length, some shorter, some longer.
Your smartphone simply switches to the lens with a longer focal length to give you a zoom.
This is why some experts refer to the version of optical zoom on smartphones as multi-camera zoom.
Although the lens or camera swapping technique used in smartphones works, there’s a small problem.
Everything in-between, like 3x or 4.5x zoom, for instance, is achieved through digital zoom.
But what is digital zoom anyway?
In digital zoom, there’s no actual change in focal length.
Digital zoom is less of actual zooming and more of brilliant cropping technology.
Because digital zoom involves cropping, the resulting image typically has a noticeable loss in quality.
Say you have a smartphone with a 20MP camera and want to do a 2x digital zoom.
Which pop in of Zoom Should You Look Out For?
Often, smartphone manufacturers advertise their products with labels like 20x zoom or 60x zoom.
Sometimes a catchy name is added.
Samsung has the 100x space zoom.
Unfortunately, most of these labels are just marketing gimmicks.
Sure, smartphones like Samsung’s Galaxy S series have admirable digital zoom power.
This is possible thanks to large sensors and lots of megapixels, giving them more resolution to work with.
However, digital zoom is still, well, cropping.
Never buy one smartphone over another because it has a larger zoom power label.
5x zoom could be better than 10x zoom.
True zoom power isn’t about how many times zoom a camera has.
