Joe McNally: Creating The Zooming Effect

On this Adorama video, pro photographer Joe McNally shares a simple yet useful creative tip for shooting an image with “zoom-effect”.

Creating a zoom effect where the image looks as if it is tunneled into the center of the frame is quite simple. You need a zoom lens and enough time during the exposure to open or close the zoom (i.e. relatively long exposure).

On this video McNally used a Nikon 24-70mm lens (the image was registered as 44mm in the camera), ISO 100, f/13 and a shutter speed of 1/6 second. McNally used one flash at the end of the exposure directed at the center of the face of his subject.

Only recently we published here a different Adorama video where photographer Bryan Peterson looked at how you can effectively use three very simple camera movement techniques to capture some interesting and creative images (one of them – explained in less dials was the one shown here by McNally).

You can find many more helpful photography tips on our Photography tips section here on and LensVid. You can also check all of Joe McNally previous videos here on the site on this link.

Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.