Welcome to today’s post for the great Blogging A to Z Challenge!

Today is Z is for Zoom.

The last post for this year’s Great Blogging from A to Z Challenge!  Can’t believe I made it.  But I have to say, this was a fun challenge that got me using my DSLR so now I’m ready to do more – and I’ll talk a bit more about that when I write my “debrief” post.  And congratulations to everyone who participated in the Challenge this year – I LOVED reading all your posts (and I now have many, many more blogs on my follow list!)

And for today, Z is for Zoom.  Not the supervillain from the Flash TV show, but Zoom as in getting closer to things with your camera without actually getting closer to them!

So, here are some pictures with me zooming in on Elliot.  Note that I should have remember to re-focus and re-set the ISO between each shot…

And after I physically moved closer (since I don’t have a telephoto lens):

But, you can do some cool things with Zoom too.  What do you think of this?

Zoom in

Zoom out

Well, it’s hard to tell what I did here, but you can set you shutter speed slow and then zoom in or out while the picture is being taken.  Obviously something I need to work on.  http://digital-photography-school.com/using-the-zoom-effect/

So, I thought about it more and considered:  what if I picked a subject with an obvious centre and zoomed in on it?  So, I took this:

And did this:

Ok, too bright, so let’s adjust the shutter speed (ISO and aperture were set as perfect as they could be for the light):

Ok, almost there…

Cool, eh?

If you want to try this or other zoom effect, which I do…sometime…, check out http://digital-photography-school.com/how-to-take-photos-with-the-zoom-blur-effect-includes-printable-cheat-sheet/