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Multiple Exposures (2)
There's no limit to how many clicks...
All that physical fiddling about with manual cameras must seem antiquated to today’s generation of new digital photographers... and I admit to feeling a sense of plain-relief taking over from masochistic-pleasure using a Nikon D200 which can do so much programming at the spin of an input-dial with the camera taking you through the mode d’emploi and then showing you the correctly exposed results on the playback screen within a second. I remember how clever the 1980s Pentax LX was with its rewind facility from the end of the roll back to any frame, by checking the rewind counter, for double and multiple exposures... but that pales into insignificance nowadays with electronics taking over from mechanics.
The exposure compensation required for multiple-exposures is simple to calculate in your head... if you're reasonably good at numbers. Think of a normal exposure, say, 1/125 sec @ f/8 as being the fixed number. If you take two exposures on the same frame of film then the exposure is halved for each shot making two exposures of 1/250 sec @ f/8... or two exposures of 1/125 sec at f/11. Likewise for four exposures on one frame of film you expose four times at 1/500 sec @ f/8 or four times at 1/125 sec @ f/16.
Alternatively you can change the film's ISO setting on your camera or meter... by doubling the number of shots you double the film speed... from, say, ISO 50 to 100, or from ISO 100 to 200. If you make four shots on a single frame change the film speed by two stops from, say, ISO 50 to 200. If you make nine shots on a single frame, which I do mostly as it appears to be a good balance between "impressionism" and "abstraction" with some "recognition" retained, then change the film's ISO rating by three stops... from ISO 50 to 400. Twenty-five shots would need the equivalent of five steps change... from ISO 50 to 800... but with this number things can go awry because of the build-up, or lack of overlapping density on the film.
You have to experiment to get the best from this technique... and if I'm in the multi-exposure mood then half a film or more is exposed on the same, or similar subjects. Of the two subjects here the modern office block in central London consumed two films at one sitting... or 72 frames... or perhaps 500 to 600 exposures... from which I know I have half a dozen shots worth reproducing in print or on screen. The rest were consigned to the round filing cabinet under the desk. Similarly with the multi-exposures of Autumn foliage at Westonbirt Aboretum in Gloucestershire, out of half a dozen films exposed on a Hasselblad 500C I got maybe half-a-dozen good shots and a worn out wrist from cranking the rewind handle so many times!
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