Testing a new camera

My old camera has become a bit unreliable, so I recently purchased a new one. The new one has more megapixels and 4x zoom instead of 2x zoom. I wanted to know what that meant in practice, so I took the test shots below. I took the first pictures with my old 3.2-megapixel camera, and the second with my new 8-megapixel camera. I have selected only the center of the picture, so this is what the camera actually captured. Clearly there is an advantage in image quality in the 8-megapixel picture.


Then I zoomed as much as each camera would zoom and retook the picture. The 2x zoom with the old camera is about the same as the non-zoomed image of the 8-megapixel camera. To see what the 4x zoom did, you have to click the second picture below to see the actual result. I am disappointed with it. Maybe with the settings I am using the camera is also doing some digital zoom, because the resulting quality is poor, though it is very big. Or maybe the results would be better on a sunny day rather than on a dark, gloomy day

Here is some information about the building in the picture. It was built with good intentions, and the Catholic Church recently canonized the founder. The goal of the school was to pull Indian boys away from their culture and teach them the culture and ways of the European Americans. Today this goal is usually condemned. We think we are wiser and smarter than our ancestors were. One wonders how much of what we are doing today with the best of intentions will be condemned by future generations.