Pentax K-3 Multi exposure and Interval Composition
The multi exposure system of the new Pentax K-3 is much improved over previous iterations. Rather than being buried in the Menu system under the record menu it now finds itself in the more prominent drive menu available at the press of a button. It’s alongside interval composite and other drive modes like high continuous, mirror up and self timer. The number of images that can be combined has also increased from 9 to 2000 and there is an additional method of compositing called bright.
It’s the interval composite mode that is new and so useful for things such as blurring moving water when you can’t set a long enough exposure. With the camera on a tripod you can set it to take a picture every 5 seconds for 10 images and average the exposure. This will generate a single image that appears like it was taken with a single long exposure. Here you can compare a single exposure against the 10 on the bottom.
If you’re wondering why wouldn’t you just take a longer exposure the answer is that you can’t always get long enough shutter speeds especially when there is plenty of light and you don’t have a neutral density filter. The interval can be set From 2 seconds to 24 hours.
Additionally with composite interval you can specify a time for the camera to begin taking the images and with multi exposure you can choose single shot, continuous, self timer with mirror up and remote control.
It all amounts to great flexibility when doing multiple exposures and it remains to be seen what photographers will be able to do with this. Here are a few samples from my playing around.
As a side note the above image is a crop from this 24 Mpixel picture, the amount of detail is astounding.
Previous use of this technique and explination can be seen here Multiple Exposures for atmosphere and Multiple Exposure again, again, again