Optical and Digital zoom can easily be confused when using a digital camera. Whats the difference? Which one is better?

When using optical zoom the lens physically extends to magnify the subject. The feature on a digital camera works the same as it did on old 35mm or non-digital cameras. Digital zoom is a a simulated zoom. The physical length of the lens remains the same. The camera pre-crops the central portion of an image an appearance of zooming in.

Camera specs might be listed as 4x optical/3x digital zoom or 12x optical/4x digital zoom. If interested about the zoom feature focus on the optical zoom specs, the digital zoom is of virtually no value.

Digital zoom is a feature that was created by the invention of the digital camera. When a camera is advertised as digital zoom 3x or 4x it's no big deal. The same zoom can be created with any novice imaging software. The reason digital zoom should not be used before is because it can be decided exactly which portion to crop and how much to enlarge, whereas taking a picture in digital zoom can not be reversed.

The iPhone uses the digital zoom feature, which is really "fake" zooming. Taking a picture using the iphone's digital zoom is essentially the same thing as looking at a picture with no zoom in the photo roll and using the pinch open movement to zoom in.

image from mobilephonereviews.org