Creative Photo Technique: Zoom During Exposure

By Deborah Sandidge

An easy way to create an artistic look with your photography is to use in-camera effects such as zooming the lens during exposure. No Photoshop needed!

(c) Deborah Sandidge

For this technique, the lens is zoomed in or out during exposure to suggest motion. To keep things sharp, yet blurred at the same time, I mounted the camera on a tripod and experimented with zooming until I found just the effect that worked for the starfish. It may take quite a few tries to nail the shot as this isn't an exact science, however it's fun to do!

Zoom-blur tips:

• Experiment with your lens to get the hang of zooming, and you don't need to zoom the entire focal length of the lens to get a great effect.

• Zooming during exposure is great for overcast days, and you can use a neutral-density filter to slow down the exposure even more.
• Use a small aperture and experiment with shutter speed, giving yourself time to zoom smoothly.

• Try this at night too - with city lights, or colorful lights from a fair or circus.

Have fun shooting! ~ Deb


Notes:

• Deborah Sandidge teaches two excellent online photography courses at BetterPhoto: Photoshop: Enhancing Images and Creating Works of Art and Digital Infrared Photography

• Deb is also a top contributor to the new book by Jim Miotke and Kerry Drager: The BetterPhoto Guide to Photographing Light (publication date: April 2012)

• In addition, zoom blur is one of the in-camera artistic techniques covered in the "Photographing Motion" chapter of the just-published book The BetterPhoto Guide to Creative Digital Photography.

Comments

[Dr. F.Zaman]

"..and you don't need to zoom the entire focal length of the lens to get a great effect."....I like it

[Robert Cain]

You can get some good effects doing this. Here is a shot I did at the 190 street subway station in NYC:
http://goo.gl/4xvqs

I would recommend taking this course.