Zoomed leaves

[Revald]

Was playing around with zooming while shooting. Found it to be quite hard since I was using my camera hand held. This shot was the only one that came out decent. I like the way pictures like these draw your eyes' attention to the center. Looking forward to your input (so I can improve my skills :-))

[Palachandra]

Nice shot, good hands on difficult technique. IMO it’s missing some strong subject. Would be more interesting to see some appealing subject at the center.

However I like the effect and afraid to try myself!

[wulf]

The effect works well but it could either do with a stronger subject, as Pala suggests, or richer colours. Lack of either mutes the drama of the zoom.

Were you zooming in or out? Also, how long did you stay focused on the leaves before zooming?

Wulf

[Revald]

Thanks for the responses. I know the subject isn't exactly the most interesting, but for now I'm only practicing, so I just used what was right in front of me :-)

I believe I was zooming in. To get it right I ended up using a fairly short shutter speed, depressed the shutter half way to lock auto-focus, then I steadied myself and started zooming after which I immediately depressed the shutter completely to take the shot in "mid-zoom". I don't know if this is the right technique. Anyone care to share there experience in this field?

[Mandar]

I have tried doing this, but my camera does not allow me to zoom after focus is locked so what I do is move the camera towards or away from the subject. This creats a lot of unwnated motion blur in my shots.
What you can try is, stop zooming at some point during exposure. This may help you in geting the subject sharper with a nice effect around it.

[matthewchj]

Arrr, it be nice looking, matey! A bottle of rum for ye, ye land lubbar!