
How to Simulate the Famous ‘Vertigo Effect’ Dolly Zoom With a Drone
We’ve covered the dolly zoom (or “Vertigo effect”) in detail recently here on PetaPixel, but did you know that you can achieve this effect using a drone, without zooming?
We’ve covered the dolly zoom (or “Vertigo effect”) in detail recently here on PetaPixel, but did you know that you can achieve this effect using a drone, without zooming?
The "dolly zoom," also known as the "Hitchcock zoom" or "Vertigo effect," is a filmmaking technique that involves changing a zoom lens' angle of view while moving the camera toward or away from a subject to keep their relative size in the frame the same. Here's a 4-minute video by Now You See It that explains this technique and how (and why) it's used.
The Dolly Zoom—also known as the Vertigo Effect—is a powerful cinematic technique that involves moving the camera in one direction while you zoom the lens in the opposite direction. But did you know you can actually create this same effect in post without a zoom lens? Thanks to high-res cameras, you can.
You might want to take some anti-nausea meds before you watch this one. Balance, a film by Tim Sessler and Brandon Bray, is a dizzying, disorienting display of drone cinematography that may just leave you slack jawed. It's also the first drone film we know of to use the famous "vertigo effect," AKA dolly zoom.
Popular YouTube personality Michael Stevens of VSauce posted this interesting 12-minute video yesterday explaining the optical science behind the "Moon Terminator Illusion" and the "Dolly Zoom Effect" (AKA the Hitchcock zoom).
French photographer Micaël Reynaud first made it onto the blog in May of 2012 when he created a trippy-but-cool example of what the dolly zoom (also known as the Hitchcock zoom) looked like when stretched to its extremes.
"Dolly zoom" is a technique that was popularized by Alfred Hitchcock in his film Vertigo, after which it was commonly referred to as "Hitchcock zoom" and the "vertigo effect". The basic idea is to photograph (or film) a subject while moving towards or away from it, and at the same time changing the focal length to keep the subject at the same size in each frame. French photographer Micaël Reynaud used this technique on a beach last year, snapping photos of a stone block at focal lengths ranging from 24mm when he was closest to it to 840mm when he was farthest away.