Results!
As a preliminary disclaimer, I did not create the the dolly zoom effect using a zoom lens like a proper dolly shot would use. Instead I used a prime lens, a lens set at one focal length. The effect can be achieved in post-processing and because of the megapixel quality of the cameras today, the cropping and enlarging does not significantly affect quality, especially when the images are compressed in .gifs and .jpegs on a website and not meant for theater viewing.
I used a Nikon D5200 and a Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 50mm f/1.8G lens. As mentioned before, this lens is set at 50mm and does not zoom. I put my camera on a cart and took pictures at a subject while sliding the cart back. Then in Photoshop, I enlarged and cropped the images that were further away until the subject was aligned and the same size as the subject in the closest photo. This post-process enlargment mimics the effects of zooming in while taking pictures from further away as both maintain the size and positioning of the subect while the background and foreground change. From the results below, we can see that we can indeed successfully create a dolly zoom effect in post-processing.
I think that this effect works better when the subject is on a platform that appears in the photos. The series of images taken with the globe could be duplicated by moving both the camera and the subject back and forth while keeping the distance between the subject and camera the same. When the subject is on a stationary platform lke the bobblehead, it is clear that the subject is stationary and the dolly zoom effect is amplified.
I had difficulties with the cart that I was using. It had 4 wheels and was hard to roll in a straight line. A traditional dolly shot uses, as its name implies, a dolly. The dolly only travels in a linear manner and the shaking in the gifs is both from human error in alignment and enlargement and from the cart shaking around.
Below are the images that I captured and edited. These are the source images that I used to create the gifs above.
