Whenever I use digital zoom on my camera, there is lesser quality than if I only used optical zoom. Any tips on gettign sharper images with digital zoom?

Don't use it.

Onboard camera software throws out bits of the file then enlarges the leftover bits to make the final image. Most times it throws out the needed bits. Shoot at optical zoom. It is best to use computer software. Crop the photo than enlarge it 10 percent, save it, do it over again till you get the size you need. Slow but fairly good results. Cheaper than buying fancy software.

Multiple resizes is not a good idea though. You'll get a more blurred image than if you did it all in one go.

this is the short version from popular photography. Should of given them the credit

The point of digital zoom is for recording low quality video with your camera...not meant for taking pictures.

Or just to make people think the camera is "better" than another one. Digital zoom is just like zooming in using you PC after you have taken the shot, as pointed out above it is practically useless.

Personally I tend to stop zooming once it goes beyond the optical zoom. However, I must ask the experts, wouldnt doing a zoom on the computer lose more details than doing a zoom on the camera, since the computer is blind to the real view, but the camera isn't?

As for recording low quality video, if anything, wouldn't it lead to more shaking than necessary unless you have a tripod, and it would be more worthwhile doing it for a still shot?

I hope I'm not speaking from personal opinion and ignorance rather than experience - if that's the case - I apologise!

Although you may think it might the the case that since the camera is seeing something the computer is not it doesn't acctually make it better. The camera just runs a similar computer program in the camera to do the zooming.

Hmm. I guess it uses some jiggerypokery with software interpolation and stuff like that...(assuming I'm not confused with increasing true resolution)... That settles it! I shall never use digital zoom ever again!

Even after I explained the whole process to my dad (about 2 months ago?), he couldn't understand why it would be considered bad. Using the family of turkeys in our yard for an example, he said that he would never find the time to actually sit down on the computer and manually crop what the optical zoom couldn't produce, so digital zoom seemed like a golden solution. I feel quite differently about it, but digital zoom may be more than a marketing ploy. To the right customer, it is allowing the camera to do one more time-saving step by itself.

agree with stuffnstuff-not everyone sees what us "experts" see. we make up a very small percentage of the camera buying market

Digital zoom on my camera is switched off by default. I've left it that way.

Digital zoom is there so companies can say Camera A has 32x zoom when it really has 10x optical and 3.2 useles...digital.