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222 The “Recording” (Camera icon) Menu Settings

1. Clear Image Zoom: The camera zooms in by throwing pixels away
from the perimeter of the frame, but then it upsamples it to a full-size
(Image Quality = Large) image using something a little better than
Photoshop’s bicubic resampling upsizing algorithm. You can zoom in
up to an additional 2x using this method.
2. Digital Zoom: The camera zooms in by throwing pixels away from the
perimeter of the frame, and then upsampling back up to 24 MP again,
using a different (some say less good) algorithm than the Clear Image
Zoom. You can zoom in an additional 2x via this method (for a total of
4x).

Optical Zoom Clear Image Zoom (2x) Digital Zoom (4x)

Figure 5-65: Clear Image Zoom can double the reach of your lens without much
degradation to the image quality. It works better than I expected. (Digital Zoom,
on the other hand, can quadruple the reach of your lens, and it works worse than I
expected.  But it’s still handy if you’re just going for snapshots.)

5.26.1 DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CIZ AND DIGITAL ZOOM
So far both functions seem to do the same thing – throw away pixels
around the periphery so the subject looks more zoomed in, and then upsizes
what’s left to go back to 24 megapixels. What’s the difference? Well, CIZ
only lets you zoom in so far whereas Digital Zoom lets you go further.
Internally there are two different upsampling algorithms at work (one of
which Sony feels is better than the other, otherwise they wouldn’t be
calling them by two different names) but in this camera it’s impossible to
compare the two.

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