Zooming During Exposure

One of the favorite times of the day for me is early morning. And I say that because, you know, when you think about it. There's less people around early morning than there is late in the evening, right? So you kinda have, as a photographer, you got it all to yourself. So we're downtown this morning and hoping to get some shots of some other things.

But while we're waiting for the sun to kinda get just up a little bit higher. We've got darkness. So when you got darkness, you can do fun things like zoom. And so, we're just standing on the Stone Arch Bridge. There's nothing really going on.

This is not a great shot. But it's where we need to be for things later on. So why not play? So we're gonna do some zoom shots. And in order to do a zoom shot.

There's really, like I said, there's nothing here. The shot is going to be how we zoom. The different colors and light bulbs that we see in our scene. And you'll be amazed at how many different ways the same spot is gonna give us a variety of images. So what I've done, is I'm on my lowest ISO.

Because I wanna get a long exposure. And I'm at F29, 10 seconds. And I'm starting with my scene. Actually, I'm on a zoom lens. It's a 28 to 300.

And so I'm as close as I possibly can be right now to my site. And then I'm gonna zoom away. And what I'm gonna do during this 10 seconds of exposure, watch as I go ahead and hit it. Now I'm gonna rotate my barrel. I've got 10 seconds.

I'm gonna go all the way to the end. Now this time, I'm just gonna leave it. So I've got an extra four seconds or so at the end of my exposure. Which is going to allow me to see a little bit of what I see in my scene. Because for four seconds during that shot.

It still stays sharp, okay? I'm on a tripod, I'm not hand-holding it. So the last four seconds you can kind of see where I'm at. Now let's bring the zoom all the way back in. I'll focus on those distant lights again.

Because you still wanna focus on some light in there. So the light itself is sharp. Now granted, you could throw away out of focus too. But I like having my light beams being sharp. Same thing now.

Now during the 10 second exposure. I'm gonna move my barrel very, very slowly throughout the entire 10 seconds. Still moving, still moving, still moving. Almost to the end. Very different shot.

Now you can't see anything that's in my foreground or my background is in focus. All the photograph is now, are lights. All right? So that's one thing. The other thing we can do, is we can bring the barrel back in.

And now this time, I'm gonna zoom in faster. And now I'm gonna zoom slowly back in. And I get something even different. So that's the great thing about doing zooms when you're outside. I like to use a long lens as something like this.

Because the lights, there's a colored bridge. It's way in the distance and it's blue. So it's adding colors. So that's something to consider. If it was all white lights, it may be kind of boring.

There's a street sign over here that I've shot already too with a zoom. But it's not, it's kind of small and it's in the distance. So it didn't work as well. Find something that's up close. Find something to the background.

If you can, like if you're downtown and you're seeing a variety of lights and like subway signs, street lights, cars going by. All of these things during your 10 second exposure. You bring in more and more lights all the time. So that's the fun thing about doing these zooms. You could almost pick any place you want and just play with it.

Now the key is, is that I'm using a zoom lens as opposed to a fixed-focus lens. If you had a fixed-focus lens and you still wanted to do light streaking, you can. All you would have to do is simply just, during that exposure, just move your camera like this. And you're still gonna get that. But that's not the zoom effect, that's basically a pan at night.

So I've got a zoom lens on. I'm shooting at F29, 10 seconds. And I'm at night, there's no ambient light out here now at all. Except for the lights that are illuminating the area. And it's that simple.

And it's amazing how many cool things you can get from the same procedure. My camera stopped down to F29, F22. Wherever I can get as far down as I possibly can. Simply because I'm trying to string out my exposure. I want a long exposure.

I could shoot wide open. 2.8, 3.5, whatever. But that's going to open up the lens and it's going to diminish how much time I can do my zoom. So that's the reason I'm stopping way down. It gives me more latitude at night here to get longer streaks.

Whereas if I was wide open, my streak might only be a one second exposure. Which wouldn't be as long. I could go super fast with that. But think about it. If you have a small light bulb.

Like the bridge out here. And I zoom really fast. That exposure during one second's gonna be the tiniest little streak. Whereas if I can go slowly, the light stays on brighter. Gives me more color.

And you can actually see it streaking all the way through. So that's kinda the key when you're doing something like that. Is to have a long exposure, really be able to move slowly with your zoom. And that'd get you a nicer shot. Now the other thing, is that.

Another way you can do these zooms. If, you know, one of the things that I mentioned earlier is that I've actually focused on one of the lights. So my light streaks are sharp. Now, depending upon what you're end result might be. You could also take these things.

Throw 'em way out of focus. And you get those wonderful circles of confusion. Do a very slow pan with that. Now you've got something that's almost completely abstract that works great, for example, if you're putting a storyboard together. Opening a story of nightlife.

Boom, you open it up. You've got all these out of focus lights that are streaking. You know, you can drop your clean copy over that. You get the feel of night. Without having anything be sharp.

So the possibilities to create a possibilities are endless. In one spot. In downtown. Pointing your camera any number of ways and zooming the lights during long exposures. Too much fun.