Canon SX50

I only noticed today that my camera's zoom is set to standard.....I wondered why it wasn't zooming in further. Anyway, if I set it to full zoom and leave it there will it make a difference to how much battery power it uses please? Also, will it make any difference to shots that I take close range, focusing, picture quality etc.?

 

Is that the setting where it "stop" at Maximum Optical Zoom and you have to then "zoom again" to get more?

If so the "more" is digital zoom, not optical, and the zoom-amount thermometer-bar in the view finder changes colour to show the amount that you are in digital-zoom, rather than optical.

Digital zoom is the same as cropping the photo after it is uploaded to PC, so no increase in quality. I use it to zoom in on something that I cannot see with the naked eye, take a picture, review it on the mini-screen and then, usually, delete it! once I've worked out what it is / says.

Thus better not to zoom using digital zoom if poss, and as such I prefer that the zoom stops at the limit of Optical zoom so I don't accidentally go into the digital zoom range (but I can then deliberately do that if that is what I actually want)

Macro needs the lens (I think??) fully zoomed out.

Zoom will fore-shorten the distance between foreground and background, so a type of "distortion", other than that zooming in to "frame" the picture (rather than cropping later) will mean that the whole of the sensor is used for the picture, and thus better quality of resulting photo [compared to cropping later].

 

Thank you Kristen and Woo,

Yes, that's what my camera does. But I was referring to the 'Menu'. On the camera settings it has 'Digital Zoom' listed and is set to standard....... Oops! I've just checked my camera again and the only setting is standard or off! Sorry Kristen, it looks like I've answered my own question.

Woo.....No problem!

I now have the SX50, my family bought it for my birthday.

I don't possess a photo-editing program Woo, I prefer my pictures to remain untouched, with or without faults.

 

Mine are like that too, but if I upload a picture here I do crop it first - the size and quality are reduced for uploading (otherwise it would take folk forever to get a web page up!!) so I crop in order that the reduced size/quality are less compromised as they would be if they showed irelevant parts of the photo

 

I just zoom in so the item pictured fills the frame.