Double xposure xperiments

[Geoff M]

I tried the double exposure function of my camera for the first time this long weekend. I think some further refinement is needed but I was reasonably happy with my initial foray.

[Mr Darcy]

I find #1 intriguing, but the others...Meh.
Still it is a concept worth pursuing.

[Matt. K]

Gr
They are vey interesting. It's actually quite difficult to get good results with double exposure and you have certainly scored with these. I love the 1st image in particular. It is quite powerful and disturbing.

[gstark]

I like the concept of what you're trying to do in the first image, but the registration is out of alignment, and with that, I think that the image itself fails.

When shooting a person in this way, you have a number of challenges in getting the registration right. First of all - and this applies to pretty well any multiple exposure - a good sturdy tripod needs to be your starting point. But in this case, you also need your subject to keep perfectly still. A failure in either of those areas can lead to a loss of registration, such as we see here.

There's a way around the subject movement issue however: when you're shooting the hands part of the image, mask the face/head completely with matte black cloth/card/whatever, so that you're only getting one capture of that in the multiple exposure.

Using mattes is a great way of helping to bring multiple exposure images under control. Grab something like a Cokin adapter, and make up a black matte card that occupies just 50% of the exposed front of lens area, so that you have a straight line right down the middle of the lens. Using that matte, you can now shoot an image in 2 parts - perhaps left and right, or maybe top and bottom.

Place the camera on a solid tripod, point and focus at the area where your subject will be - whole of frame. Now insert your matte so that you can see - through the viewfinder - just a half image. Compose your subject within that half of the frame, and shoot the first image. Flip the matte through 180 degrees, compose your subject in the other half of the frame, and shoot the second of your multiple exposures

This was stuff I used to do week in, week out, at weddings, on filum, in the camera. The brides (in the '70s) seemed to love it. before and after shots (civvies/wedding dress) bride looking at herself in a mirror, B&G superimposed over their wedding certificate.

Corny as hell. But so very easy with the right tools in your camera bag.

The one other thing that you need to pay attention to is the aggregate exposure that you're giving the sensor. If the correct exposure for any given scene is, say, 1/500 @ f/8, then that still needs to be maintained as the total exposure for your image. In the case where you're shooting 50/50 (as I've described) then there's no need to compensate, because you're only exposing a half an image at any one time.

But with what you're trying here, you will need to compensate by cutting the exposure for each image part that you're shooting by 50% for two images, superimposed. So, 1/1000 at f/8 for each of the two images. Otherwise, you'll come away with images that may appear over-exposed.

Great effort; well done.

[zafra52]

I like the first best, but I also liked the others. People would think that made the images as layers in Photoshop or equivalent application.

[Geoff M]

Thanks all for the feedback, especially Gary. I have done double exposures in the way you have explained here back In my film days, late 70's and through the 80's. I had a Cokin holder with set of templates with various 'corny' shapes such as keyhole, heart etc; and some homemade ones too.

The Fuji has an inbuilt double exposure mode, I shoot in aperture priority most of the time and in the DE camera mode the camera looks after the exposure of each frame for you - not sure how, but it seems pretty well balanced even when the lighting can be drastically different for each of the frames. The images here were all handheld and yes a tripod would definitely help especially on the first image and of course a still subject would also help. My daughter was not very interested in participating on this day so keeping still was always going to be a challenge! I shall be doing some further exploration in the coming weeks.


Geoff

[sirhc55]

Creepy, creepy and creepy, but brilliant

[ozimax]

To be honest, I'm not sure about these. Not sure if I like them or dislike them. I'll have to think about it.