Zooming is an easy and fun technique for adding motion to nighttime photos.
Zooming Technique for Night Photos
Creative Technique: Zooming
If you're looking for a fun way to add a twist
to your night shots,
consider the old "zooming" technique that was so popular back in the
film SLR days. It's a simple technique and with digital, of course, you
can see the results of your experiments right away. The technique is
simple: just set a relatively long exposure (at least 1/15th second)
and then zoom the lens from one extreme to the other during the
exposure. Of course, the longer the exposure time the more time you
have to experiment wiht zoom speed and whether or not you want to use
the entire zoom range or just a part of it.
I
took this photo in Times Square around midnight on a hot Saturday
night. I had spent a few hours trying to get sharply focused shots and once I had exhausted all the ideas and angles that I was seeing, I wanted to try something a bit more creative and decided to use longer exposures and let the motion become a part of the photos. For this shot I used a zoom lens (18-70mm Nikkor) and rested the camera on a
construction barrier while I zoomed the lens (tele-to-wide) for about a
half second at f/13. I bracketed exposure quite widely, ranging from about a quarter-second exposure to upwards of a full second. You can really (and should) vary the effect by changing the
speed that you "rack" or twist the zoom lens. You can also change the look somewhat depending on whether you start at the telephoto or
wide-angle range focal-length setting (with certain subjects this makes quite a difference in the final appearance). Also, if
you pause or jiggle the camera, you can get some interesting night-motion shots.
There's really no way to predict how your images will turn out and
often you get little surprises that you can't anticipate. If you look
at the left front edge of the Times Square photo, for example, you can
read the "Mamma Mia" sign very clearly. That happened because I paused the zoom briefly at that particular portion of the frame to
register the sign sharply. I also like that you can see faces in the
streaks of light (look at the lower left) if you look carefully.
Entire Site Contents Copyright 2012 Jeff Wignall
An Ambitious Dogs Production In Association with Boo Boo & Mama Cat Films Please also visit my Photo Tip of the Day blog.
