How do cheap camcorders have 60x zoom?

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paulbrighton

I was wondering how the "cheap" £200 camcorders can have 40-60x optical zoom whereas a DSLR doesn't have much of a zoom unless you buy a very expensive zoom lens?
(Basically I'm looking for reassurance that my £600 HD DSLR was worth the money :lol:)
 
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I think you have to try to understand which are the possibilities of each camera. Ok so this toy you mentioned got a 60x zoom. What you can do with that? Which is the sensor of this camera? It allows you to, as a professional, set the ISO, the SS, the aperture, the custom WB? Can you use interchangeable lenses on this gear? Can you achieve the so wanted "film look" with this?

In my opinion, you have to start to think about WHAT you need. What do you want from a camera? Zoom? If zoom helps you in your job, that's great. But if you want to shoot movies, what the zoom can make for you?
 
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I wouldn't call a camcorder a "toy". You can make great films with even a cheap one.

But to answer your question, the 60x "zoom" is digital. Optical zoom is the only real zoom. You can do digital zoom in post, but you've gotta be judicious with it. Even a little bit is noticeable.
 
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Indeed, the 60x zoom is digital and therefore isn't "real" zoom, it just crops the image and stretches it to fit. This means you lose 1/2 the pixels for just 2x zoom. Imagine 60x... 1/60 of the pixels left. Completely unusable. :)
 
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Cracker Funk said:
I wouldn't call a camcorder a "toy". You can make great films with even a cheap one..
Click to expand...

English is not my first language, so I use slangs learned from others posts. In this case, I used the word "toy" in the same way of "gear", just substituting "camera" without any pejorative intend. Even because I started working with camcorders and I know we can do great jobs with that.

And I just wrote this post because I'm seeing the author is the same who recently bought the GH2 and he got very insecure about that. So I think the point here is not exactly the 60x, is something bigger. :)
 
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It crops the image in camera.

You can do the same thing with the image of a DSLR. Just crop the image in Post Production. Select the part of the image you want to *zoom in on* and crop that part!
 
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FernandoAndre said:
English is not my first language, so I use slangs learned from others posts. In this case, I used the word "toy" in the same way of "gear", just substituting "camera" without any pejorative intend. Even because I started working with camcorders and I know we can do great jobs with that.

And I just wrote this post because I'm seeing the author is the same who recently bought the GH2 and he got very insecure about that. So I think the point here is not exactly the 60x, is something bigger. :)
Click to expand...

Word.

(that's slang for "agreed"/"affirmative"/"yep") :)

Since he's on the GH2, he should know that there is a distinction between the digital zoom on a camcorder, vs. the digital zoom on a GH2. They work the same, in the sense that the image is cropped, and not an actual zoom. However, on a camcorder you're losing resolution (and it's ugly), while on a GH2, high resolution is maintained in digital zoom because the sensor is so freaking huge that even when cropped it's still plenty big enough.
 
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Cracker Funk said:
Word.

(that's slang for "agreed"/"affirmative"/"yep") :)

Since he's on the GH2, he should know that there is a distinction between the digital zoom on a camcorder, vs. the digital zoom on a GH2. They work the same, in the sense that the image is cropped, and not an actual zoom. However, on a camcorder you're losing resolution (and it's ugly), while on a GH2, high resolution is maintained in digital zoom because the sensor is so freaking huge that even when cropped it's still plenty big enough.
Click to expand...

I thought the GH2 was only 1080p though, so wouldn't you notice half the pixels are missing no matter how big the sensor is?
 
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That depends upon what your final product is going to be viewed on. If you are outputting to DVD/BluRay/YouTube/Vimeo/VOD, you're looking at 1080p maximum resolution anyway. If you plan to show your project on the big screen at a festival or cinemaplex, then higher resolution is the way to go. One nice thing about shooting in higher resolution than your final output is that it gives you leeway for cropping in post.
 
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But the GH2 is still 1080p. What difference does that make between that and say the Canon T2i, if the T2i is also 1080p? Does the sensor size make that much difference?

Plus movies shown on theater projection do not pixelate that I have seen. At the film festival where I live a lot of the movies were shown on regular SD DVDs and there was no pixelation while blown up, as oppose to an HDTV. So what difference does it make when an HDTV has an even higher resolution that theater projection or so it seems.
 
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The advantage to a larger sensor is that more information is captured per pixel. It gives you the equivalent of a tighter film grain. The bigger the sensor, the larger the benefit. This is why people make a big deal about sensor size.
 
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Okay thanks. When I first came on here, I asked if there are any advantages over the video mode of the Canon 7D over the Canon T2i, and I was told by the users, that the video mode is the same, and that I might as well save my money. Thanks for all the info and helping, but I had known about more info in the pixels back then.
 
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