Having learned to avoid digital zoom like the plague, I was surprised when an AVS Forum thread included decent clips taken with the 24x digital zoom setting of the Sony CX500V camcorder. I'm guessing that the oversampling of video vs the 1920 x 1080 output resolution means much of the "digital zoom" at only 2x off the optical zoom is still using optically captured data. Anyway, this clip is me taking some test stills and video at the 24x digital zoom setting. Note that the CX500V has this intermediate 24x (12x optical times 2) digital zoom setting where the CX550V does not.
By the way, I apologize that the stills up front didn't render in their native 16:9 format just like the video size. I forgot to check the box for force that but wasn't concerned because I didn't think my editor would play with the stills in any case. But it did - there should be no letterboxing effect and the stills look horizontally stretched to me vs the originals.
ThomasAlexHD 1 year ago