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20 megapixels and enlarge/crop or 2X optical zoom and 2x digital zoom at 12 megapixels?

lindsaybev

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I need to bring some distant mountains closer to the "real world" size and my P4 makes them look the size of my pinky fingernail. I was thinking about getting a Peau fixed prime lens that is 2x zoom and replacing the P4 lens manually. But having had no real testimonials about this process, I decided to just get a Mavic 2 Zoom.

Now I am wondering if it would be better to take a distant photo at 20 megapixles and enlarge/crop or to use the Mavic Zoom to get the best picture already close at 12 megapixels??
 
I use optical zoom as needed, but avoid the pixel spreading of digital zooming and/or interpolation of data that goes with it. Size of intended viewing does have some bearing. My photo library becomes an 80 inch Full screen TV screen saver.
 
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I need to bring some distant mountains closer to the "real world" size and my P4 makes them look the size of my pinky fingernail. I was thinking about getting a Peau fixed prime lens that is 2x zoom and replacing the P4 lens manually. But having had no real testimonials about this process, I decided to just get a Mavic 2 Zoom.

Now I am wondering if it would be better to take a distant photo at 20 megapixles and enlarge/crop or to use the Mavic Zoom to get the best picture already close at 12 megapixels??

Too many variables. This is close enough that under some conditions one will be better and other conditions the other better.
 
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Not a lot of help but to get distant things like mountains to look close you have to use a telephoto lens.

Estate agents use different focal length lenses to fool potential buyers, if they use a wide angle lens on a property with a short driveway it makes it look longer, if mountains are far away the camera fitted with a telephoto is positioned a long way from the property giving the impression that the mountains are closer than they are.

69594
 
A 2X crop on a M2P still image leaves you with about ~5MP. The still image quality on the Pro is much better and the lens itself is better, but if your goal is to get as much resolution as possible then the M2Z will put more pixels on the subject after a 2X zoom than cropping a M2P image.

One caveat is that the M2Z image is already being negatively impacted by diffraction after F3 (so basically if you use any of the zoom at all) and such a tiny sensor has significant noise even at ISO 100 and very poor dynamic range, so there are other factors in play here but it depends what the intended end usage is.
 
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