Although it's not as common as it used to be, you'll still come across the occasional camera ad listing two types of zoom: optical and digital. We just saw a press release for the recently released Pentax Optio E80 mentioning optical zoom and something called "intelligent zoom." Besides the optical 3X zoom lens it has "the Intelligent Zoom function, which...can extend the zoom range to approximately 17.1 times." To the untrained eye, the last sentence may give you the impression that you are buying a superzoom, with a 17.1x zoom lens. You're not. (This is just a random example. Other camera companies do exactly the same thing.)

In our view, optical zoom is the only type to consider when buying a camera. It maintains image quality by relying on the lens itself to magnify details. Digital zoom, which is sometimes referred to as extended zoom (or in this case, intelligent zoom), magnifies an image by electronically enlarging just a portion of it. In some cases, the camera itself must fill in missing details, which almost always degrades the image. If your camera has digital zoom, we suggest turning it off and using just the optical zoom.

On most point-and-shoots, optical zoom ranges between 3x and 10x, although some newer superzoom models have as much as 26x. In many ways, how much zoom you need also depends upon they type of photos you take. For example, if you do a lot of shooting from a distance, say from the sidelines of your kid's soccer game or the middle of the school auditorium, you may want to opt for a superzoom, a camera that has at least a 10x optical zoom lens.

Our Ratings (available to subscribers) tell you which cameras have the greatest overall optical zoom. —Terry Sullivan