It seems that digital camera makers are lowering the quality of their optics (thereby reducing the practical amount of optical zoom they can provide) and instead focusing on "digital" zoom, which, as Ducktapeguy pointed out, is not a good thing. The digital zoom does work, but the more of it you apply the more corrupted the photo.

Optical zoom is identified as the first set of characters in the camera's zoom field. 3x/120x means 3x optical zoom and 120x digital zoom. The optical zoom is pure lens capture of your subject. Digital zoom just enlarges the pixels of the photo. The more digital zoom used, the larger the pixels, and the blurrier the image.

With our 14x Sony Mavicas, you didn;t really need a tripod too often. We used them for long-distance photos of license plates, cars, and people. The cameras had image stabilization (which most all do) which did a fair job of taking care of vibrations. That said, if you want the clearest photo using the highest zoom factor, a tripod and timed shutter activation is the only way to do it. This way, you set the shutter to capture say five seconds after you press the button. You press the button and step away and the camera then takes the photo without any interference.

When I began considering replacing the Mavicas, their newest models wrote the images to a CDR and, if I remember correctly, the highest optical zoom had dropped to about 12x or maybe 10x. We didn;t get them and have yet to replace the Mavicas.

About the only way to get a good optical zoom anymore is by looking at the digital SLR cameras. Again, these are the ones with interchangeable lenses that we're accustomed to seeing photographers use for the last several decades. They are true digital cameras with mega-pixel quality, but their lenses are purely optical. They are, by far, the most versatile digi-cams out there that I'm aware of, but they carry a pricetag well above Norad's $200 budget.