Optical VS digital zoom

[noone]

I have come to love using Sony Clear image zoom for both jpeg stills and video. 

Very little loss of quality and more so if you only use a little zoom but works well as variable zoom to 2x (using digital zoom from 2x to 4x though gets noticeable).

  I have not used it a lot for video because my video use is mostly just shooting live bands/soloists/duos but I do want to give it a go and should be a bit easier for video with a remote control (I got a very cheap remote recently but I need a better one).

I accept that all things being equal optical zoom SHOULD be better but then again all things being equal a high quality prime is better than even a good optical zoom.    In any case if you start with a good lens you still have a good lens.

For example I would MUCH rather use a lens like my Sony Zeiss 55 1.8 with clear zoom than many of the old optical zooms i have had at 100mm 

It also means I can zoom lenses like my 17mm tilt shift lens while shifted/tilted and other lenses that have no zooms.

Having recently got a wonderful old Tokina 60-120 2.8 manual focus lens I thought i would give it a try with both 120mm optically and 60mm with 2x clearzoom.

This is an ancient zoom but is actually quite sharp and probably the sharpest zoom I have owned and better than many old primes but obviously not as sharp as a modern prime (there is a sharpness test somewhere online where someone compared about 50 lenses with this and two other zooms and the rest primes and this actually beat many of the primes...I do not disagree).

Like many zooms, this lens is supposed to be better at the short end too which means it may well be BETTER to use it at 60mm and 2x.

My Takeaway is the lens is clearly either not 60mm really or not 120mm really or both as there is a difference between 60mm at 2x and 120mm and even though I see little difference between these really, i guess i will keep using it mostly at 120mm optically (and then can zoom digitally to 240mm).

Given it was designed and sold as a portrait lens, it does not need to be the absolute sharpest.

I need to use it more and especially for portraits (I just am having trouble finding "victims").

I did not mind Panasonic ETC either when I had a GX7 but just wish it was variable too.

 

 

[leslie]

1 hour ago, noone said:

I have come to love using Sony Clear image zoom for both jpeg stills and video. 

Very little loss of quality and more so if you only use a little zoom but works well as variable zoom to 2x (using digital zoom from 2x to 4x though gets noticeable).

  I have not used it a lot for video because my video use is mostly just shooting live bands/soloists/duos but I do want to give it a go and should be a bit easier for video with a remote control (I got a very cheap remote recently but I need a better one).

I accept that all things being equal optical zoom SHOULD be better but then again all things being equal a high quality prime is better than even a good optical zoom.    In any case if you start with a good lens you still have a good lens.

For example I would MUCH rather use a lens like my Sony Zeiss 55 1.8 with clear zoom than many of the old optical zooms i have had at 100mm 

It also means I can zoom lenses like my 17mm tilt shift lens while shifted/tilted and other lenses that have no zooms.

Having recently got a wonderful old Tokina 60-120 2.8 manual focus lens I thought i would give it a try with both 120mm optically and 60mm with 2x clearzoom.

This is an ancient zoom but is actually quite sharp and probably the sharpest zoom I have owned and better than many old primes but obviously not as sharp as a modern prime (there is a sharpness test somewhere online where someone compared about 50 lenses with this and two other zooms and the rest primes and this actually beat many of the primes...I do not disagree).

Like many zooms, this lens is supposed to be better at the short end too which means it may well be BETTER to use it at 60mm and 2x.

My Takeaway is the lens is clearly either not 60mm really or not 120mm really or both as there is a difference between 60mm at 2x and 120mm and even though I see little difference between these really, i guess i will keep using it mostly at 120mm optically (and then can zoom digitally to 240mm).

Given it was designed and sold as a portrait lens, it does not need to be the absolute sharpest.

I need to use it more and especially for portraits (I just am having trouble finding "victims").

 

well if you keep covering them in clay i can understand why nobody wants to participate.🙄

i also think a little digital zooming is ok. Maybe some purists would  have heart palpitations with that statement. But think done in moderation or discreetly, its a usable effect.

[kye]

I did a test of digitally reframing in post, comparing a 4K shot at 100% and a 4K shot digitally-zoomed at 148% (to match framing).  

The purpose of the test was to compare taking a 4K crop of 6K with simply filming 4K and digitally-cropping in the same amount.

My impression was that it's pretty darn difficult to tell the difference once it's been compressed, but it was also pretty difficult to tell the difference looking at the files straight out of camera.  You could tell that the upscale was a bit blurred but most lenses are also a bit blurred and codecs a bit blurred too, so in a practical sense I think you're fine.  

Using Clearimage zoom is also better than the test above as it is pre-compression, whereas the above is post-compression and is throwing away bitrate.