i hope i don't have to tell anyone by now that optical zoom MEANS NOTHING

Optical zoom means everything. Digital zoom means nothing.

he. Yea nothing. The wide angle on this bad boy is so nice you only need to be 40 feet away to get your shot framed. Sweet, Canon.

he. Yea nothing. The wide angle on this bad boy is so nice you only need to be 40 feet away to get your shot framed. Sweet, Canon.

wide angle is much more important than zoom, especially when CCD resolution is so high. You can just crop if you want to print a pic of something close and still not lose any quality. However, a lack of wide angle can send you over a ledge.

#5, that's crap. There's this little thing called sensor noise. Cropping will not give you a quality pic when you enlarge it. Optical zoom is key if you want good pics from far away. Wide angle is important if you want close up shots. To make a blanket statement that one is better is silly. It just depends on what you're composing.

Agree that optical zoom means everything, Got my SX10 with 20x zoom, impressed the picture shows clear details of 500 feet away.