I disagree with Mike's statement about digital zooming replacing glass. Remember that digital zooming is nothing more than an interpolation of the missing pixels. In otherwords, you take a portion of the resolution and make an educated guess at filling in the missing pixels, or in other words, lose image accuracy and sharpness. This is because the filled-in pixels are nothing more than a calculated guess. You simply cannot make up information that isn't there. Now when you have a zoom lens, the optics are bringing you closer to the image, so the resulting image should be as sharp or nearly as sharp as actually being that close to the object. No guesswork is put into the composition of the image and detail should be relatively sharp and accurate. So, if you take a lens that digitally zooms you to 300 from a base of, say 75 optically, it should not be anywhere near as sharp as if you shoot with an optical 300. Digital zooms may accentuate the line, but I don't see them replacing optical lenses. After all, you can always enlarge your image, so a digital zoom is more of a convenience than anything else. I've based this info on articles I've read on camcorders, regarding digital vs. optical magnification and the resulting images. Ross
