Zoom Zoom Zoom

No, I'm not going to do a Mazda commercial. What I am going to show is how I zoom while the shutter is open.

click on image for a full view

The carnie came to town and I try to never miss one because of the great light show I can photograph. I got there a night too early, as they were still setting up the carnival for the weekend. In a way that was even better because there was no one around, leaving me to play with my camera.

The settings used for all of these pictures are:

Nikon D5000 with Nikkor 18-200mm vr lens attached. This lens has a way large zoom range making it especially nice for this kind of shooting. I set the ISO on 100, apperture priority at f/25 which gave me a shutter speed of 3 seconds. Long enough to zoom but not so long as to put me to sleep.

The specific settings are not that critical as long as you have a very slow shutter speed.

Focus was on manual. This is important to me because I like to focus on something in order to have some parts of the image in focus. In this case it was the center of the ferris wheel. I like to have something in focus in all of my images, and not a big blob of blurr.

Unless you are the bionic man or woman, a sturdy tripod is necessary for this kind of shooting.


Start zooming as soon as you press the shutter release.
What I like to do is zoom a bit, stop, zoom a bit, stop. Hence the title of this post.
Vary this pattern in different ways for some startling and wild images.

This image started with a tele setting of about 170mm and I zoomed out for just a short bit. You can start at any point of your zoom lens and then vary the way you zoom.

Click on these images for a larger and better view

Thanks for reading, and a special thanks for your links and clicks. I really do need to be linked to other sites and would appreciate that favor.

If you like the post then please use the provided links for your shopping. Stay safe and have a fun time with your camera the next time the carnie comes to town!