What the best way to film pictures to where the camera pans across several, zoom in and such. Or is there someway, with an editing program or something to get this effect that you see if movies?

Thanks for any tips or help.

People who are proficient at AfterEffects assure me you can just scan the pictures into a computer and manipulate them in post, but every time I've done it for a project, I set them up on a music stand or art table draped with black, and do my moves with the camera and a good fluid tripod. That way I can do zooms, rack in and out of focus etc., then dissolve between them in post.

unless you do it yourself, After Effects can be expensive, I would do it in camera, which honestly, always looks best no matter what your doing. This can be harder to do with a film camera, than a digital video camera. If you using a video format, like mini dv you can easily just play around and see exactly what your shoooting, so you can shoot to your standards. I don't know, I've always had success with just doing it in camera.

Hey, welcome to IndieTalk!

Hey thanks for the advice. I'll give it a try with the camera and see what happens.

thanks again

I like After Effects. You can easily do things impossible to do with a camera like duplicating and slicing an image and make a single image move at different rates. The History Channel does this a lot in their documentaries. For instance, say there’s a picture of a line of hikers on a mountain pass. You can take one image file and load it 3 times allowing different parts to show with a slow zoom where the foreground zooms faster than the background and the hiker’s appear to move laterally across the mountain with the clouds moving in the opposite direction. This example is rather complicated, but AE can really liven up the pictures and make it a more visually interesting piece.