Canon EOS M3 camera preview resolution is different from the result?

[TheHooligan95]

Good day.

The camera is set up on a tripod. The lens has a manual focus ring and aperture. I shoot the shot by using a 10second timer to avoid shaky camera

Yet, there is a noticeable difference in sharpness between the preview image when checking focus with the in camera digital zoom, and the sharpness of the resulting image in the camera gallery.

I'm shooting raw, 3:2 aspect ratio (24MP)

Can someone help me understand why this happens? Example pictures incoming.

postimg.cc/gallery/qr3rHg4

It looks minimal for sure but if you focus on the finer details one is definitely sharper than the other

[NatalyaP]

Greetings TheHooligan95,

When zooming in on a live image preview while shooting, the magnification is being done on light that is being actively captured by the sensor to be previewed on the LCD screen which may make it seem like it's producing a sharper image compared to when magnifying the image after the photo is taken where the camera enlarges the pixels which have already been captured, processed, and recorded. The camera will enlarge and dither each pixel which may result in some softness based on how much is being magnified. This does not indicate that the sensor is underperforming, and the camera is still capturing the number of pixels available on the sensor.