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.
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).
We've written a couple of times in the past on how you can achieve drastically different portrait looks by choosing different lens focal lengths and subject distances. Basically, your choice of glass can make a huge impact on what your subject's face looks like... and how much they appear to weigh.
Reddit user Popocuffs wanted to demonstrate this, but instead of using a human subject, he used his cat.
"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.