Larry Lefever Photography

Furnace Hills

One of the features I love on the Nikon D800 is it’s ability to do multiple exposures. In this day of Photoshop compositing, something that I use in most of my work, you might wonder, why composite in camera? Well I don’t use it for compositing different scenes, but instead to ‘increase’ the output of my flash. When I paint with flash I typically use 3 small Nikon SB-80’s mounted on a Lastolite 3-way bracket and even at full power (They live at full power), they can’t put out enough light to cover more expansive landscapes. Multiple exposure to the rescue. The D800 can combine up to 10 exposures into one file, so I set the shutter speed at the max sync speed to keep the ambient light low and with each trip the shutter the light from the flash keeps accumulating. The image below is one of the source files used to create the above picture. It consists of 8 exposures, each of the brightness of the image on the bottom. With flash photography, brightness of the ambient light is controlled by the shutter speed and brightness of the flash is controlled by the aperture and or the output of the flash unit. So, a limiting factor with this technique is the ambient light. Since that ambient level increases with each trip of the shutter, if the existing daylight is too bright you will quickly reach a point where the accumulating ambient light begins to overpower the effect being attempted with the flash. So, the technique works best at dusk, dawn, or in heavy overcast. Even with it’s limitations, multiple exposure is a great way to get more out of any kind of flash equipment.

8 exposures

Single exposure