optical and digital zoom?? help?

Jorge Detlefs: Camel got it right, but let me emphasize and make a few points:1. Digital zoom does not exist. Ignore it completely, as it is really not a zoom at all, it is just magnifying the crop out from the center of an image. It degrades image quality badly, and has zero advantages. If a portion of a shot need to be magnified beyond what optical zoom can do, it can be done with higher quality later on a computer. 2. The magnification factor (as 4x) has little to do with actual picture quality, but yes, there is a catch. Technically, that factor is just how wide a range of zoom lenses focal lengths is. What is important for most casual photographers, however, is to have a decently wide angle on a short end. In other words, look for camera's 35mm equivalent focal lengths, and make sure that your lens goes to at least 28mm or smaller (though few p&s cameras in fact go smaller). At that wide angle she should be able to get shots of group of people in relatively small roo! m. As to long end, this is less important, but for some people, bigger magnification factor will give a lot more reach, such as with 200mm equivalent she would be able to shoot a single person from across a regular city street, or pick a face out of a crowd, if this is desired. That said, super zoom lenses (10x, 20x, etc) do tend to produce slightly more distortions, but I can bet you that it won't be much of an issue, as it will take a professional eye to spot most of them. Good luck, LEM....Show more

Darren Heling: I probably can't answer your question for the camera recommendation but regarding the zoom thingy, ... as below;Optical zoom is where the camera lens does the magnification. Digital zoom is magnification done with the camera software by expanding on the pixels. Optical zoom magnifies without compromising the image quality much and hence the preferred feature between the 2.the 'x' description provides the times of magnification. It does not measures as len! gth and breadth but an indication of the upper and lower end o! f the lens focal length, e.g. a lens with 10mm - 100mm definition would be depicted as 10x Optical.Hope this helps...Show more