What is it that makes pictures look better when you zoom in?

Question

Its hard to explain but basically if you use a phone and take a picture, when you zoom in it tends to be blurry and not very detailed. However if you use a camera you can zoom in more without blur and you pick up more detail.

What is it that enables you to zoom in and avoid blur?

Is it how many megapixels the camera has or something like that?

Answer 1

Lens quality but in the end, it will go down to how close you are to your subject and good you are in taking pictures.

Answer 2

That's because the tiny sensor on a phone is only just able to cope with digital noise between the photoreceptors. Then there is the tiny lens which is not particularly well designed or capable. So when you digitally zoom into an image from one of these (crop to the centre) you are simply magnifying the problems that are already there. OK, some manufacturers claim that thier special resampling software is smart and gets rid of some of the noise and bad effects. Tiny sensors require optical zoom so that the image quality doesn't quickly degrade.

Now with a carmera with a bigger sensor the little photo receptors are further apart and there is a much better signal to noise ratio; then there is the lens that's better at lighgt collecting and shaping the light as it zooms the image.



Megapixels? The more you cram on a tiny sensor the more digital processing is required to keep the image clean. 8mp is about right for a phone cam at present, 13 is manageable, 20? hmmmm.... let's see how that new Sony pans out. The 41mp sensor on the new Nokia is designed so that virtual zooming (digital cropping) can be done by downsampling groups of pixels to be like an 8mp image.

Answer 3

One, the answer has nothing to do with amount of megapixels. Two, phone cameras are not meant to replace cameras or a camera lens. Phone cameras or rather using a phone to take pictures, have a very useful value! What if you are in a car accident? You can document the amount of damage done to all vehicles involved, show basic weather conditions, etc. Or even take picture of the other guy walking around before he sues you claiming you put him in a wheel chair. If you meet someone who you haven't seen in a long time and probably will never see them again. At least a small rememberance picture is better than nothing at all. BUT to use a phone camera as a replacement for a regular camera is pure lunacy in my mind! Now everything you do looks better close-up. Think about it, getting closer to the subject always looks better, whether with a zoom lens or simply walking closer to the subject.

Answer 4

No, it's down to the way the lens is made.



Most phone cameras rely on digital zoom - enlarging a small portion of the image. Obviously, this degrades the image, and the more you zoom, the worse it gets.



Cameras rely on optical zoom - individual lens elements move to change the lens' angle-of-view - this is like changing lenses to suit the conditions. While many cameras include digital zoom, sensible people turn it off, and the more expensive types - EVIL and DSLR - do not use digital zoom at all.

Answer 5

If you want a phone camera that takes good pix when you zoom in, get the Samsung Galaxy S4. It has 10x optical zoom.