Heron extreme zoom
Discovered that my Canon Bridge camera not only has the 65x optical zoom but also digital 'zoom plus' to 130x and normal digital zoom to 260x, so I decided to get out with it this morning and see how much quality is lost at the high zooms. Canon claim no loss of quality with the 'zoom plus' but warn that there will be a reduction at more than 130x. I can certainly vouch for that!! The 260x photo is a crap shot anyway because the heron had flown to the other side of the river and was in full sun: the camera couldn't cope with that and I couldn't do much in PhotoShop without introducing even more noise. An interesting exercise though (especially trying to keep the camera still enough at the extreme ends of the range without a tripod - I couldn't be bothered carrying one and settled for bracing against trees!) but somehow I don't think I'll be using the 260x zoom very much in future...!
Heron extreme zoom
Discovered that my Canon Bridge camera not only has the 65x optical zoom but also digital 'zoom plus' to 130x and normal digital zoom to 260x, so I decided to get out with it this morning and see how much quality is lost at the high zooms. Canon claim no loss of quality with the 'zoom plus' but warn that there will be a reduction at more than 130x. I can certainly vouch for that!! The 260x photo is a crap shot anyway because the heron had flown to the other side of the river and was in full sun: the camera couldn't cope with that and I couldn't do much in PhotoShop without introducing even more noise. An interesting exercise though (especially trying to keep the camera still enough at the extreme ends of the range without a tripod - I couldn't be bothered carrying one and settled for bracing against trees!) but somehow I don't think I'll be using the 260x zoom very much in future...!