Multiple and double exposures: creating them

[BBW]

Thanks to Michael's question within a recent thread he started, I've decided to get around to asking my own questions about this while fully admitting that I haven't begun to look through my E-P2's manual yet.

... I noticed in one of the recent reviews that the Olympus M4/3 cameras have the facility of multiple exposures. Have any of the members used and published images that have been created with this function? I would be interested to look at them.

Cheers Michael

I know that one of our members - graustark uses this technique quite a bit and that she's posted a few in her gallery here: https://www.mu-43.com/gallery/g699-e-p2-imaginaries.html She also has a Flickr page here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/graustark

I am going to send her a PM to ask if she might consider coming on here to discuss her work a bit. Meanwhile there may be others out there who use this method and I hope they'll post their own experiences, etc. - and I also hope we can have more examples of this art form, as well.

 

[BBW]

I've heard from graustark who assures me that she will post a response. The stuff of nonphotographic life is just a bit hectic right now. So we'll have to hang in here for a bit.

 

[squeegee]

are they just talking about bracketing?

that will take multiple pictures of different exposures... It doesn't automatically merge the images for you though.

 

[BBW]

No, not bracketing. Look at graustark's links that I posted and you'll see what I mean.

 

[squeegee]

oh okay I think I found it, I just assumed those were single pictures.

here's an excerpt from olympus
---
MULTIPLE EXPOSURE

A Multiple Exposure function enables you to be creative right in the camera. Multiple images can be captured and combined to create one unique image. The creative possibilities are endless.
---

so basically it's just taking 2 pictures and overlaying them on top of each other. I originally though this thread was taking multiple pictures of the same thing and overlaying their pixels to get HDR or something.

 

[graustark]

I love doing multiple exposures, and it was one of the E-P2's selling points for me. If you're looking for the setting, it's on the second tab of the menu. Alas, you can't combine it with the art filters, but it's available under most of the other settings, I think. From the multiple exposure menu, you can set number of exposures (2 or not) auto gain, and overlay.

Auto gain I leave set to off. I think it adjusts the exposure value in anticipation of stacked exposures, and you'd probably want to use it if you were doing a shot where say only the subject's arms moved, and the rest of the scene was unchanged.

I find overlay useful and turn it on. It lets you see a "ghost" of your first exposure as you are composing your second. I'm used to doing doubles with film (where I often don't even remember what the first exposure was!) so this is a really nice enhancement.

When composing for multi-exposure, the most important thing to remember is that light, bright areas will dominate darker areas. I almost always want to do some adjustment in Photoshop on my doubles, too -- usually I just use "Curves" to improve the contrast, as doubles can be a little washed-out looking straight out of camera. Sometimes I play with color balance or saturation, too, but that's about the extent of my Photoshop skillz.

 

[BBW]

Hey, thanks so much for making the time to post here, graustark! I'm going to look into this and try it out. I think you've put together some great images using this technique and need to spend more time on your Flickr pages.

Come back on with some of your new work, when you have the time!