In this paper we present a method for search and localization of objects with a mobile robot using a monocular camera with zoom capabilities. We show how to overcome the limitations of low resolution images in object recognition by utilizing a combination of an attention mechanism and zooming as the first steps in the recognition process. The attention mechanism is based on receptive field cooccurrence histograms and the object recognition on SIFT feature matching. We present two methods for estimating the distance to the objects which serve both as the input to the control of the zoom and the final object localization. Through extensive experiments in a realistic environment, we highlight the strengths and weaknesses of both methods. To evaluate the usefulness of the method we also present results from experiments with an integrated system where a global sensing plan is generated based on view planning to let the camera cover the space on a per room basis.