Like how does moving some glasses make the light seem closer. I know it’s different than digital zoom cuz closer objects enlarge faster in optical zoom but how? Also what is the limit here or can we zoom indefinitely?
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Think about, glasses, a telescope or microscope can make distant objects appear larger, or very small but very close object appear bigger. Think also about how certain camera shots seem super wide with things appearing smaller, but showing more at once than a human sight could see (usually with distortion in the edges). Lenses bend light, and can do so in ways that make light rays spread out or go closer together. Optical zoom uses a lot of lenses that move relative to each other in order to change the bending of light to a remarkably accurate degree, giving you the shot you want, at the expense of mechanical complexity.
Now, for digital zoom, if you zoom in say, 2x you aren’t actually doing anything mechanical. You are basically removing every other pixel on each line and column, for a total of 3/4 of them removed. You then expand the remaining pixels in the image to fix the same size image. There’s a bit more complexity to get more resolution than just removing 3/4 the pixels, but that’s the basic idea. This is a pretty easy process for a modern computer. You inevitably lose fine detail doing this, but it is easy and with sufficient pixels, good enough in many cases.
Think about, glasses, a telescope or microscope can make distant objects appear larger, or very small but very close object appear bigger. Think also about how certain camera shots seem super wide with things appearing smaller, but showing more at once than a human sight could see (usually with distortion in the edges). Lenses bend light, and can do so in ways that make light rays spread out or go closer together. Optical zoom uses a lot of lenses that move relative to each other in order to change the bending of light to a remarkably accurate degree, giving you the shot you want, at the expense of mechanical complexity.
Now, for digital zoom, if you zoom in say, 2x you aren’t actually doing anything mechanical. You are basically removing every other pixel on each line and column, for a total of 3/4 of them removed. You then expand the remaining pixels in the image to fix the same size image. There’s a bit more complexity to get more resolution than just removing 3/4 the pixels, but that’s the basic idea. This is a pretty easy process for a modern computer. You inevitably lose fine detail doing this, but it is easy and with sufficient pixels, good enough in many cases.
There are various lenses in a camera. Each lense bends the light of an object. The lenses move in very precise ways to talk a small piece of light on the outer lense and spread it out over a larger and larger area until that small dot is the size of the lens itself on the back end. In theory the only limit to optical magnification is the sensitivity of the sensor, the perfection of the lense, and the physics of light itself.
Digital zoom just takes the raw data from the image sensor and spreads it out over more pixels. So now each megapixel of the camera occupies more pixels on the screen.
There are various lenses in a camera. Each lense bends the light of an object. The lenses move in very precise ways to talk a small piece of light on the outer lense and spread it out over a larger and larger area until that small dot is the size of the lens itself on the back end. In theory the only limit to optical magnification is the sensitivity of the sensor, the perfection of the lense, and the physics of light itself.
Digital zoom just takes the raw data from the image sensor and spreads it out over more pixels. So now each megapixel of the camera occupies more pixels on the screen.
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