The present invention provides a camera and a camera zoom control method that can reduce power consumption at the time of zooming and shorten the time difference between the timing of a photographing instruction and the timing of actual photographing. Until a release button is operated, the optical zoom magnifying power of a lens is controlled to become a zoom magnifying power corresponding to an operation with respect to a zoom switch, and when the release button has been operated, the optical zoom magnifying power of the lens is controlled to become the zoom magnifying power corresponding to the operation with respect to the zoom switch.