the higher the optical zoom the better. but if you go past a certain point in didgital zoom you lose quality
My mom just got some super sweet digital camera. I know very little about the market of digital cameras but she got a Sony Cybershot. It's a 5.1 Megapixel with a 12.0x zoom. It's a DSC-H1. I don't know what most of that means but I just read it off the box.