Old Dog/New Trick

[Arthur Morris]

I have always taught folks that shutter speedsof 1/4 or 1/5 sec. are best for creating zoom blurs. At Heislerville, NJ there have been groups of 10,000 to 15,000 shorebirds on the late afternoon high tides. Denise and I have enjoyed creating a variety of blurred images especially at dusk. Not sure why but I tried for the zoom blur effect while using a relatively fast shutter speed of 1/30 sec. I zoomed from 400 to 100 as fast as possible. To my surprise, I got some nice ones.

Canon 100-400 L IS lens handheld. ISO 200. Evaluative metering +1 stop: 1/30 sec. at f/10 in Manual mode.

Don't be shy; all comments welcome.

ps: The bulk of the birds were Semipalmated Sandpipers.

[denise ippolito]

Artie, Great idea to do a zoom blur. I like the way this came out. You could also bring the tree line down a tiny bit if you wanted. The blast offs were amazing and I was so happy to be able to shoot with your friend Kevin Karlson from Cape May. Kevin knows where all the birds in Cape May are and is a fantastic photographer. Here is a link to his web-site
http://www.kevinkarlsonphotography.com/

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Artie, I like this use of the zoom blur! At that shutter speed, you must have had to do some serious pumping of that 100-400mm. Looking forward to the guide to creative blurs!!

[Thomas Herou]

Very nice zoom-effect!
I like the horizontal layers which makes it all more intresting.