The HC-X900 and HC-X900M camcorders from Panasonic have almost legendary video picture quality over their 12X optical zoom range thanks to their three CMOS sensors and "pixel shift" technology. But the camcorders also have "Intelligent Zoom" which extends the zoom range to 23X in a special higher-quality way before the standard "digital zoom" kicks in above 23X.

To test the Intelligent Zoom (iZoom) I filmed test charts at both 12X (optical zoom) and 23X (iZoom) with the HC-X900M. The best available format 1080/50p was used.

The three shots shown in this video are:
(1) 12X optical zoom
(2) 23X iZoom
(3) side-by-side comparison of (1) enlarged by almost 2X in post-processing using bicubic interpolation, and (2).

The left side of shot (3) is effectively what the 23X picture would look like if it was obtained by simple digital zoom of the 12X picture. So shot (3) shows how good iZoom is compared to digital zoom.

iZoom is less contrasty than digital zoom, but does have slightly better vertical and horizontal resolution and lower noise. iZoom obviously has much lower quality than optical zoom of 23X would have, but the improvement over basic digital zoom probably justifies its presence.

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