Digital zoom is useful for people whose aim when taking photos is not quality, digital zoom is a way of making things easy. This is why most cameras offering digital zooms are just pint and shoot, cameras intended for youtube use or similar products for people who want their content right on the web straight from the camera.

However, I have observed that cameras capable of cropping in camera can offer a little bit more quality at expense of the loss of Megapixels. By Cropping I mean "post processing done in camera". Normally this is done by using "playback" mode, zooming and panning the picture you have already taken, and hitting some option to "save what you see". The camera then saves a copy of your picture with a new file name that contains only a portion of the image. The resulting image is usually smaller in pixel count but roughly the same quality as the original. The advantage here is, you get both, the "zoomed" image and the original, right out of the camera. This method usually limits the "steps" of framing that are allowed, but then again, this functionality is aimed for people who is not primarily focused in picture quality. For everyone else, there is post production!

Digital zoom is useful for people whose aim when taking photos is not quality, digital zoom is a way of making things easy. This is why most cameras offering digital zooms are just point and shoot, cameras intended for youtube use or similar products for people who want their content right on the web straight from the camera.

However, I have observed that cameras capable of cropping in camera can offer a little bit more quality at expense of the loss of Megapixels. By Cropping I mean "post processing done in camera". Normally this is done by using "playback" mode, zooming and panning the picture you have already taken, and hitting some option to "save what you see". The camera then saves a copy of your picture with a new file name that contains only a portion of the image. The resulting image is usually smaller in pixel count but roughly the same quality as the original. The advantage here is, you get both, the "zoomed" image and the original, right out of the camera. This method usually limits the "steps" of framing that are allowed, but then again, this functionality is aimed for people who is not primarily focused in picture quality. For everyone else, there is post production!