Multi-Exposure

I have D200 and I have been trying to use the Multi-Exposure setting, but my results have not been what I expected, as you can see by my posting. I have used both auto gain on and off, I have used both the manual and program settings and I have looked through my owners manual, but nothing seems to work. I have seen great results in other postings and I was anxious to this out this technique.

Any suggestions on this subject would be great.

Thanks,

Mike

...my results have not been what I expected, as you can see by my posting.

Actually, Mike, I'm not sure what you were expecting. Your image is sort of what I would expect from multi-exposure with a person moving between shots.

Maybe you were expecting the person to be properly exposed and rendered in each shot? But the camera doesn't know what your subject is or that it was moving - it's "dumb" that way. So all it does is averages all the exposures so that no part of it is over-exposed. Therefore each location of a person becomes an average of all the shots, which means "ghost" like images as you see here. (It's the average between the person in one shot, and the BG in the other shots.)

David,

Thanks for the response. I have seen postings for example that have a bird landing on a branch and the bird is shown in numerous positions as it prepares for landing. I guess that is what I was thinking with the multiple exposures. Maybe this is a different technique.

Thanks

Mike - I don't believe there's any camera that can do that kind of thing automatically (it's actually pretty complicated, since the camera would have to be guessing at what you want). That would actually be a Photoshop technique, whereby you layer the images and combine the parts of the shots you want. So using rapid shots in sequence applies to what you want, but the in-camera merging doesn't.

That makes sense. Thanks for the information. I should have known it was not as easy as I thought!!

Thanks!!

Would it help to highlight the subject using a flash (fast recycle time needed!), and underexposing the surroundings?
Frank

Probably not, Frank, depending on what you're going for. Remember that the issue isn't the the subject doesn't stand out from the background, but that each area is an average of the multiple shots. So if you used a flash in the way you suggest, each individual shot may have the subject brightly lit. But in camera after combining shots it would still show the flashed subject, averaged with the dark background of the other frames. As far as the camera is concerned, there's no difference between what Mike was trying to do, and just taking a few shots of a wall. It would do the same thing either way - average all of the frames together.

I'll have to review my instructions but on the D300 and D700 I think I recall 2 modes for multiple exposure; one for averaging the background to full exposure which leaves "ghosts' for the rest and andsecond mode for a full exposure with each shot. the latter is best used against dark backgrounds. I doubt there would be 'ghosting' with full exposure but the background might be blown.
the fisch

That's interesting Larry. If it will just add the shots rather than average them, you could get something more like what Mike is thinking. You'd need the subject to be properly exposed, with the BG appropriately underexposed for the number of shots you merge. (I'm not sure what that would mean exactly - some experimentation would be necessary.) So the flash idea may be useful there. Any spot properly exposed in more than one image would probably also blow out though. So it sounds possible but very very tricky in practice.