i have canon sx100 which has a wonderful zoom option - 10x optical zoom
That depends on what you are using it for. For small family shots, about 5.0x zoom is good. If you are going into nature photography or something you will first of all not want digital, but manual zoom, and you will also want a much much stronger zoom.
A optical zoom use the lenses to focus in on a subject, pretty much the same way binoculars work. Digital zoom magnifies the subject by enlarging in in the pic thru a digital process, this is not a true type of zoom.
Optical zoom is way better than digital zoom as digital only expands the picture. Optical zoom actually zooms in.
3x optical zoom and 5x digital zoom are standard features on most mid-range pocket digital cameras. A better optical zoom capability would be 6x or 8x optical. The digital zoom capability can be ignored, since all it does is crop and expand your image, necessarily reducing its resolution. Digital zoom may be handy for giving you a close-up view in the viewfinder or on the viewscreen, but the photographer must remember that picture quality shot with digital zoom may be compromised. POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP U:P
Optical Zoom is the true zoom, Digital is basically the zoom in of what the highest optical zoom is. Therefore Optical Zoom is the better zoom, and gives a much clearer picture.
The Cannon Powershot has both and optical and digital zoom features. Optical zoom is far superior to digital zoom.
zoom is to enlarge the image and capture in a digital camera
Digital zoom takes what the camera is capturing and artifically enlarges the image to give you a zoom effect. Optical zoom, however, is actual physical magnification of the picture, ensuring that your footage is as good as it can be.
Sony makes digital camcorders with great zoom and picture quality. A good one would be the Sony HandyCam HDR-XR150.
You will have an image about 20% larger at x60, but there is catch. Usually magnification of that amount is a combination of the optical zoom and digital zoom. The total obtained by multiplying. With digital zoom, the quality will likely decrease faster as the magnification increases. So normally, the optical zoom will go to maximum before the digital zoom begins to operate. So if the x50 has 10x optical and then 5x digital, it could produce a better image than 6x optical with 10x digital zoom (unless the optics are not that great). It's good to know which is which. See if you can find reviews on both.
Digital zoom uses software to zoom in further than regular optical zoom, which uses lenses to magnify the picture.
There are some good Fugi D-series cameras that work great for telephoto.