Double Exposures for Dummies

…or in this case, how to make a $900 digital camera take photos like a cheap plastic film camera!

I was scanning stuff on Flickr a while back and saw something I wanted to try myself. The idea is to take a double exposure with one shot out of focus and one shot in focus to achieve that dreamy look we have come to associate with “Toy cameras” like the Holga or Diana.

As you can see from the photo above – it works!

This photograph was taken using the Pentax K-01’s on-board multi-exposure feature. It’s really easy. You just select the multi-exposure menu option, select the number of exposures you want (2 in this case although you can select up to 9), check off the little box to let the camera know you want it to calculate the exposure values for you and then hit the start shooting button. Now you’re ready to shoot.

After preselecting aperture priority and f8 to insure the depth of field I wanted I took the first shot with the auto-focus on. Then I switched to manual focus and turned the focus ring until it was as out of focus as possible.  The camera selected 1/125 shutter speed and an ISO of 800.

Then I took the resulting photo into Picasa, enhanced the color saturation & contrast a bit and added a little vignette to produce the picture you see above.

The photo below is the “before,” a straight shot of the composition without the double exposure or vignette.

All in all a very interesting experience and a technique I will keep in mind for future photos, especially since it’s so easy to do with the K-01. My favorite film camera these days is the Pentax ZX-7 which has a similar feature I have yet to explore. Perhaps it will be the subject of a future blog post!