One More Attempt to Explain Multiple Exposures

Understandably, my description of how I do a double exposure left  PipeTobacco perplexed. I don't blame him. 

Please explain a bit more about this fancy “gizmo” setting on your camera. It is not a setting I have ever heard of before, and it sound so interesting. And, at the same time I was trying to think of a purpose for the camera folks to think of including such a thing. I would like to hear your ideas and opinions.

Making a double exposure is not difficult to do, at least at a basic level. I just have to instruct the camera to take one more exposure over top of the first exposure. Maybe the film example, coming up below, will help.

In the days of film, a photographer could do this by not advancing the film after taking a photo. Whatever s/he took with the second click would be superimposed on top of the first. Now in effect, we can also instruct a modern digital camera to not advance the frame. 

Of course, now it must be accomplished through the camera's software because there is no film to actually stop from advancing. The camera simply stores the first image, temporarily, in its memory. The photographer then composes the second, overlay image, and the camera software blends the two images together into one.

I expect that most DSLRs are able to do multiple exposures, for I am using my older camera (maybe 7 years old) in the basement where we have our primitive still-life setup. I am fairly sure that my even older DSLR also has this capability, but it is with Danica these days, so I cannot check right now. I don't imagine this feature would be found in less expensive cameras, and Sue's iPhone 13 can not do it as far as I know.

One can create a similar effect in Photoshop by taking two separate images and blending them in post. I showed these examples back in Dad's Bible, My Photos post, but I will repeat the two examples below. The first is the in-camera image; the second is my Photoshop-blended version.

To reiterate: I manually blended two images in Photoshop (second photo, above) while the camera did its own  blending in the first example after I selected the appropriate command in the menu system.

As for Mr Pipe trying to think of a purpose for the technique, it's all about art. 

Here are two sample: the first from layersmagazine.com and the second from phlearn.com. I am fairly certain that the second was done in Photoshop and, probably, the first image too.

I will never achieve those sorts of levels of artistry, and for now I am just experimenting with something that is new to me, especially the in-camera method.

As a final bit, and to, hopefully, demonstrate even more clearly, I set up one camera to take a double exposure of one of my lenses. I took a picture of the back of that camera with my other camera. It shows one lens, or I should say the lens once.

The first camera was on a tripod, so I moved the object (lens) to the left. It then appeared as though there were two lenses, but of course there weren't.

I hope this explains the concept and process better. I don't suppose that I will do much of this technique, for I think one would have to be more artistically inclined to make it work well. Besides that, I am not particularly interested in emulating the two sample head photos from earlier in this post. It has been fun to play, however, and I expect that I will do more in time.