Seadog, I am computer and digital camera challenged, but I love taking pictures! In plain english, the way I see it is that once you go into "digital zoom", really you are just putting a microscope onto the best "optical zoom" and chopping off a bit of the whole picture, basically enlarging what was already there, and compromising the photo quality. I never let my shots go beyond the line that my viewfinder has marked as the limit of the optical zoom. They are never good when I do that (fuzzy)

Laurie, Ken has great equipment, but that camera JimB is talking about is a SERIOUS camera, not one you can just put in your pocket! Just depends on what you want!

Editing to say that I just went to that site that Arlene referred you to! Maybe I did the Reader's Digest Condensed version for the answer I gave you, but nice to see that a better authority than me can give you the specifics.