9930 Camera resolution with digital zoom

"recently" upgraded to 7.1.0.755, and I've noticed a problem with my digital zoom. I have photo size set to max (2560x1920), and with no zoom, the photos are this size. However, when I turn on the digital zoom and zoom in, the photo size shrinks to as low as 640x480. I'm pretty sure this wasn't always the case. Did I set something wrong after the upgrade, or am I just noticing this problem?

I also just noticed that my "administrator" has disabled "check for software updates", so another thought might be this is an administrator setting? I REALLY doubt it, but just throwing it out there. Thanks all!

Originally Posted by bryan144

Did I set something wrong after the upgrade, or am I just noticing this problem?

It's always been like this.

That's what digital zoom is. All it does is reduce the resolution of the image while enlarging it on screen to trick you into thinking it's zoomed in closer. That's why it floors me when people ask for "zoom" while recording videos - whoops, your HD video is now VGA resolution.

Well, I feel dumb. Looking back over old pix with old phones, I guess (maybe) they were being saved at native resolution and not the zoomed resolution, because I always had the full size pix.

Thanks! I'll promptly turn off the digital zoom!

I just noticed this yesterday and I still don't understand. I took pictures of Mt Rainier (40 miles away) while out on a ski trip. The non-zoomed image has a size of 1,447kb. The zoomed image is awful and 79kb. Why is the quality so much different? (on CB, the quality of the poor image is not as evident as it is when viewing on computer using irfanview.

Digital Zoom basically crops the picture...Digital zoom isn't ideal and Don't recommend using it. Everytime you zoom, it crops the picture making it smaller and smaller for each step of zooming in! This is why the size of the picture gets reduced, so too does the quality as you can see.

Optical zoom is the one you want to use (most common in dedicated cameras) They keep the original quality while zooming in (to a point). Hope this helps!

Originally Posted by Cap_172R

Digital Zoom basically crops the picture...Digital zoom isn't ideal and Don't recommend using it. Everytime you zoom, it crops the picture making it smaller and smaller for each step of zooming in! This is why the size of the picture gets reduced, so too does the quality as you can see.

Optical zoom is the one you want to use (most common in dedicated cameras) They keep the original quality while zooming in (to a point). Hope this helps!

I guess I had not noticed how bad and how small the image was until yesterday since I did forget my REAL camera. And I guess I still remember the good quality of my 9650/Bold which had a real optical zoom. What's in the new q/z bb10 cameras?

Originally Posted by jem9777

That's what digital zoom is. All it does is reduce the resolution of the image while enlarging it on screen to trick you into thinking it's zoomed in closer. That's why it floors me when people ask for "zoom" while recording videos - whoops, your HD video is now VGA resolution.

LOL I always wondered why I couldn't zoom during videos!