Wallace Koopmans Artlog

The Pentax K-3 has a number of new features not previously available on any camera.  While other cameras have had the ability to take multiple exposures none have come close to the versatility of the K-3.  In my case I wanted to use this feature to create the look of a long exposure with flowing water.  Light conditions were that even stopped down to f22 and 100 ISO the shutter speed was around 1/2 second.  That just isn’t enough time to give the look I was after, which ultimately is an averaging of the water. This GIF shows two images each captured using 20 exposures one using averaging and one with bright mode.

Primarily the difference between the two methods was that averaging did as it suggests and all twenty frames smoothed each other out where with the ‘Bright” mode of composition any bright reflection of water registered above the rest of the frames.  So it would appear that for smoothing out water averaging is the better mode.  Another difference though was that the Bright mode image was about a half stop brighter.  I could have edited to eliminate that but I’m not sure if it is something that always occurs and it also helps to differentiate the images.

I continued to use ‘Bright’ mode for the rest of the images it gives the look of a long exposure with the added stop motion of a fast shutter speed.  Which one is preferable is a matter of taste.  additionally I lowered the number of exposures I used to create each image to 9 which seems to give roughly the same effect as the 20 did with these shutter speeds.

Here is a detail from one of the above images which shows how using the bright mode allows for individual variations in the water to still register and not be smoothed away this would likely have created a more dramatic difference had I used a shorter shutter speed for each exposure.

My initial post and more information about composition here Pentax K-3 Multi exposure and Interval Composition

There is another way to use Bright composite that I haven’t been able to fully utilize yet and that is to use it to create multiple flash exposures. The idea is that with the camera on a tripod taking multiple exposures and a wireless flash trigger you can walk around a scene lighting it with a flash. I have done some initial experiments but haven’t had an opportunity to take it to the level I want such as lighting an entire section of a forest or other landscape. That will be a future post I’m sure