It is also true that as you decrease the resolution you are shooting at more Smart Zoom becomes available. Taking an 8 megapixel camera as an example again if you reduce the resolution to five megapixels 1.8x extra zoom becomes available. If you decrease the resolution down to 1 megapixel 4.7x Smart Zoom becomes available.

Smart zoom is not widely available. I am only aware of it being available in Sony digital cameras. Smart zoom works in a different way to digital zoom. It is cleverer and does not degrade the quality of the photo. The downside of this type of zoom is that you cannot use the full resolution of your camera when you are using Smart Zoom. For example if you have an 8 megapixel digital camera it only becomes available at 7 megapixels and below.