Sucked in at the Casino

Hi Glen, i experimented with this technique once, too. Today I'm not too happy with the results, but back then (1 year) i was I tried it on a tram, and i won a little price with it. Noe i know how i couldve made the first place, but back then i didn't. Now what i want to say is, of course you get these streaks that lead the viewers eye to the motive. of course you leave non photographers stunned and surprised. But in my honest opinion, you need sth. to connect it with. take the casino sign for example. i guess it would work great if you only concentrated on the sign; filling, say 1/3rd of the upper frame. then zoom out as fast as you can and try to end up wit the door, the whole wall or however far your zoom goes. the sign will pop at the viewer like nothing, i guess. here, there are (at least for me) far too many streaks in the picture. thanks for commenting on the swift guy, i guess you were right about cropping and getting a better view; i just didn't want to.

Thanks Florian, I agree entirely. I have about 15 variants of this shot including one or two that work with the sign - by pausing 3 or 4 times along the way you can write the name again along the way. It's good fun. Thanks for your comments.

Glen, really like this shot a lot! So the technique is to keep the speed low while zooming quickly? In any case, if you did that, you must have been using a tripod to keep everything in focus so very well. Perhaps I'm wrong about technique (was reading comments above), but the image itself, with the neon lights, bars sign and keystoning perspective looks quite original.

Yes D.L. Pick a zoom lens with a reasonable range (17-85mm in my case), place camera on tripod, frame the picture with the lens zoomed right out and also see what you get when it is zoomed right in. For things like the words in this photo you want to keep them in the frame as you zoom out. Set exposure so you will have around 8 seconds to play with. Now zoom to one extremity, press the shutter while you have one hand ready to turn the zoom, I use a cable release. As the exposure goes, slowly zoom the lens to the other extreme to get the lines. By moving/pausing along the length of the zoom you can cause things like the 'Casino' words to write in mid air. Manual focus (night). Use Long Exposure Noise Reduction also to help with the noise.

Get sucked in at the Treasury.