What is the difference between optical and digital zoom?

I am looking at a camera that says 5x optical and 36x digital zoom. What does that mean?

I am looking at another one that says 10x optical zoom.

Which has a better zoom? Does anyone know? Thanks so much!

Re: What is the difference between optical and digital zoom?

This isn't the most scientific way to explain it but here's my understanding:

Optical zoom is the camera actually zooming in before the photo is snapped. It will maintain the same resolution quality at any of the zoom levels.

Digital zooms is the camera using software to digitally zoom into a photo - this will reduce the quality somewhat and can also be performed on computer software. With the resolution quality so high on cameras now adays, you won't tell that much of a difference between digital and optical at the lower #'s. Where it makes a difference is at the higher zoom #'s.

For example, if you take a picture of a mountain but want to zoom in on a leaf on a tree on that mountain. You will see a big difference with a higher optical zoom for this type of operation.

If you are taking a picture of a person and use 5x optical zoom vs. 7x digital zoom, you probably wouldn't see much difference.

Generally, you want more optical zoom as even if your camera doesn't have the digital zoom, once you snap the photo, you can zoom on your computer using any kind of editing software.