Multiple Exposure

Traveller

Strangely, I have just found the multiple exposure option on my D5100. The reference manual makes it reasonably clear that I can merge several exposures into one image, but there is no reference to increasing/decreasing exposure values with each shot (I may have missed it). Is the multiple exposure option another way of creating HDR-like images?

Traveller

Seems the HDR functionality is different and only available when shooting jpeg. So what is this Multiple Exposure function for? It completely escapes me. :-)

bruto

Multiple exposure will merge two images. So, for example, if you shoot two pictures of the same person in two different places and merge them, you will get the person doubled. Or if you shoot an animal and a moon in the sky,you can put the moon behind the animal. Maybe. You occasionally see images with a soldier and an eagle, or a flag, or a beloved older person and a youthful ghost, or the like, which are done with multiple exposure. It's hard to do well, but fun to play with. Image merge in the camera will not produce HDR because simply overlaying images will leave blown out sections blown out. So, if you shoot two pictures, one underexposed and one over, you may gain some shadow detail but the blown highlights will stay blown. The range in which you can modify exposure is very limited, and HDR is much more sophisticated.

There are software options I've read about (none have worked for me yet), which supposedly will do HDR with different exposures of the same RAW image. You could take a RAW image that is correctly exposed, drop it by two stops in View NX2, save that as a new image, then revert and raise it by two stops and save that. You would then have a three-exposure bracket shot with a four stop range. I tried one freeware program that did pretty well on this, but caused terrible moire, and have not gotten around to others. I think you can do this in Lightroom with a plugin.

Traveller

Thanks @BRUTO.

TricksterAbhi

This is amazing.