Any differences between an internal and external lens??

I am just looking at buying the Sony W90/80 or T20. Both cameras seem to have exactly the same functions so I am leaning toward the T20 becuase I dropped my old camera on the lens which had an external lens and it broke it . I thought that the T20 could solve this to some extent as its lens is internal. Just wondering if anything is sacrified in having an internal lens opposed to an external one like on the W90.

Thanks

Mike:

The lens has to physically travel a certain distance from the sensor to get "zoom." If the lens can't travel, the camera will be limited to (inferior) digital zoom.

External zoom lenses are not limited by the thickness of the camera because they can be telescopic. External zoom lenses often have a lot of zoom, because the lens can move a long distance from the sensor.

Internal lenses can also be telescopic, but the overall travel distance must be much shorter because it is limited by the thickness of the camera itself.

Whether a camera zooms internally or externally doesn't make a difference in image quality. As far as I know, the only difference in zoom range for these two cameras is the wide angle/telephoto limits. The W80 gets a little wider than the T20, but at the cost of a few millimeters of telephoto. The extra wide angle that the W80 gets might be important to some photographers, but the extra few MM at telephoto on the T20 are not likely to be noticed - a little wide angle effects the photo a LOT more than a little telephoto.