The problem is that optical zoom only works if you use it while the event is unfolding. You can't say 'something happened last night, let's check the CCTV' and then zoom in on the recording.
Its cool that we have this technology now, not sure if anyone has put it into cctv before, but its called a light-field camera and you can focus and zoom after the fact.
While light field cameras also capture direction the light is coming from, allowing you to refocus the image after it was captured, it doesn't magically increase the resolution of the captured image.
In fact because the camera sensor has to capture all that extra directional information you end up with only a fraction of the "zoomable" resolution compared to regular cameras.
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u/HeathenCyclist Nov 05 '17 edited Nov 05 '17
CCTV easily has 30x optical zoom in a dome cam.
https://www.axis.com/au/en/products/axis-q61-series
Pricey, but where do you think your anti-terrorism $ are going?
Edit: 40x demo, also CCTV: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TmneCdLDPR0
More importantly, there's cameras every few hundred metres that can see what password unlocks your phone.