Digital Zoom is not nearly the same as Optical Zoom. Optical Zoom uses Optics (A.K.A. the Lens!) to zoom in to your subject. When a Camera uses Digital Zoom it actually throws away pixels from your image, and this is not something you want to do if you want great looking images! The Digital Zoom feature uses less of the sensor to capture the image. It basically ignores the pixels towards the outside edge of the sensor. The downside is you loose image quality.
What do you do if you want to zoom in closer? The easy answer is to get closer to your subject! Sometimes that is just not practical so your other solution is to use software on your computer to crop the image, "zooming" into your subject. Why is this better then Digital Zoom? The better software packages out there will add pixels to help make the image look better. PhotoShop and PhotoShop Elements does this quite well as well as other competing products.
So, how do you avoid using Digital Zoom? Most cameras will have a "Digital Zoom? YES NO" setting in their menu systems like I found on my Canon PowerShot. Check your manual, it should be easy to find if it is available. If you don't have a setting to turn it off most cameras will give some indication that they are going from Optical to Digital zoom. Sometimes there is a visual indication on the screen, it might just be a line on the zoom scale. It may also have a slight pause when zooming if you use Digital Zoom.
Menu from my Canon PowerShot
Good luck and take a lot of pictures!
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