Help Zoom before taking the pic, or crop/zoom after?

[hal1]

Being that I guess the zoom is digital, I'm guessing that there is no advantage to zooming in for the picture, versus crop/zoom the image afterwards.

Also, I believe that if you're going to put the image on a computer, then the computers zoom/edit software, while still digital, yields a better result than zooming with the camera. (at least it does with conventional digital photography.

Lastly, I would expect more camera shake if you zoom in first.

Any thoughts on this?

 

[dibs ODDJOB]

In general, its best to capture as much of the environment as possible, which means zoomed out. Digital zoom doesnt help and should be avoided when possible with a normal camera. Which is why I switched my DI off of widescreen, because it was clipping the top and bottom if my shots. On phones, though, it more comes down to convenience and what your purpose is. I zoom in sometimes on things if I'm mailing it.

 

[elrabin]

Crop later on your computer.

shooting at no digital zoom, at full res, you can crop however you like later, and at better quality than the phone using digital zoom will do.

 

[sunthas]

So just to clarify.
DInc zoom is all digital?
DInc widescreen setting actually crops the picture down because the lens and default non-widescreen size is not the same aspect ratio as the DInc screen that you normally view pictures on?

 

[hal1]

Crop later on your computer.

shooting at no digital zoom, at full res, you can crop however you like later, and at better quality than the phone using digital zoom will do.

This is what I was thinking. there's nothing that the camera zoom can do that your PC editing/zoom (even the most basic) wouldn't do better