Optical Zoom vs. Megapixels?

Pei Heatherly: Optical zoom is much more important. A point and shoot camera only has one lens and you should get the most out of it. Megapixels is basically a myth. All modern cameras have more than enough mega pixels. To many megapixels on the tiny sensor of point and shoot cameras can actually be bad. Small pixels packed tightly together on a small sensor generate a lot of heat. To much heat and your photos become very noisy. Especially at higher ISO settings. Bottom line is go with the camera with the most zoom....Show more

Peter Lapoint: For the best answers, search on this site https://shorturl.im/axA4fThe question about which was the better zoom facility was something I wished to resolve some time ago so I experimented with my own 12.1 Mp 15x Nikon camera by taking a shot of a distant building, which had writing on it, on normal setting, and the same building using the full 15x zoom, although at that magnification a tripod is needed as you cannot hold the cam! era still enough. I inputted the normal image into PhotoImpression, my favourite software for handling pictures, cropped it to the same content as the zoomed picture - the same picture but reduced in size - and then magnified the cropped picture to the image size of the zoomed image, so using electronic zoom to match the optical zoom. It was obvious from the sharpness of the detail revealed in this test that the use of optical zoom gives a far better result than that of the electronic zoom. With optical zoom I could read the writing easily, but with electronic zoom it was too blurred to be legible, so I would recommend the 10.1Mp 12x camera as anything over 8Mp will give excellent results. Also the greater the number of megapixels the less images you can store on the memory card. Whichever of the two cameras you buy, try this experiment yourself to see if I am correct....Show more

Ninfa Asby: difference between 8 and 10 mp is negligible.Go with the 5x zoom.

Pasq! uale Pollet: 8Mp is not too smaller than 10Mp...8Mp cameras wi! ll generate images with approx. 3264x2448 pixels10Mp cameras will generate images with approx. 3648x2736 pixelsThe image will be 12% bigger.You may check the focal length of the lens... 28~140mm (5x zoom) is far better than 35-105mm (3x zoom) for taking pictures of close things....Show more

Robin Weelborg: If you want a Point and shoot camera then go for megapixels.If you want a set up the shot and take you time then optical zoom is better.If you can afford it then A digital SLR is even better something along the lines of the Nikon D70.Hope this helps...Show more

Ruthe Real: you really only need 6 or 7 megapixels on a camera. if you want a camera with 10x optical zoom then get the Panasonic Lumix DMC-T25.if you want a reliable camera id get the canon 880 or even the 790, you can get a nikon too, they're good. once you stop using a kodak you notice the pictures are much better.

Renita Sefton: As has been said the difference between 8 megapixels and 10 megap! ixels will be negligible the biggest difference is the 10 megapixel will probably have worse low light noise due to pixel crowding. Believe me when I say that 3x optical zoom is basically useless and digital zoom is a joke. 5x is pretty decent. Still really nothing to write home about but it will get the job done fairly well.

Lorelei Lilburn: Optical V Digital Zoom

Mohamed Szollosi: probably megapixel