Robin Pic. Critique

[NJMAN]

its impossible to use "digital zoom" without optical zoom. therefore, you did use digital zoom...making Ikavaney NOT "dead wrong" as you put it.

I would suggest potentially trying to reshoot not exceeding your 12x optical. If you get into that situation its usually almost always better to crop after the pic is taken rather than use digital zoom.

Correct. Digital zoom comes into play after the optical zoom is maxed all the way (on a digital point and shoot, that is). Back when I used a point and shoot, I avoided digital zoom like the plague because using it made the quality suffer greatly.