Multiple exposure in-camera Canon 5D Mark III

Question about Canon 5D Mark III’s Multiple Exposure, which combines shots in-camera. I realise one purpose could be a moving subject. But I was thinking about it mainly for high contrast highlight/shadow scenes, taking the 1st shot perfectly exposed for the bright parts and another exposed for dark areas and then combine (in a sort of HDR way). But then I thought that still wouldn’t work, as my perfect highlight areas from shot one would be made brighter by the addition of shot 2. Similarly, the perfect shadows would no longer be perfect when the very dark shadows of the other shot were combined (although theoretically the combined shot should still be better than an individual one with lesser bad extremes).

 

The other thought related to perfect focus through the landscape scene. Rather than use f8 or f11, I thought of perfectly focusing using f4 or f5.6 with the multiple exposures first for nearby in shot one, next focus on middle distance in shot 2, and then focus for further away in shot 3. But again my hope of getting the whole distance range sharply in focus once combined I presume wouldn’t work? - because although I’ve taken every distance in perfect focus in one of the shots, that perfect bit would be blurred once I combined it with a shot where somewhere else was in perfect focus. ie an area that comes out perfect in one shot (focus or exposure) is combined with the same spot where it appears blurrier or wrongly exposed in another where somewhere else was perfect.

 

N.B. Thread moved from Beginner Forum

Edited July 29, 2018 by William Michael

Perhaps for HDR, you should stick with separate exposures and combine them with an app like Photomatix.

 

This link is a tutorial for video, but the principle is the same: HDR Video Tutorial - Vancouver Video Production

There are multiple modes within the multiple exposure. There is ADDITIVE, AVERAGE, LIGHT, & DARK. (there are 'descriptions' of the differences, plus instructions on use on pg177-183 of your manual)

 

I've only used this mode a couple of times, so I can't exactly qualify what the differences are in the processing of these images, but ADDITIVE seems to behave as one would expect , while AVERAGE, LIGHT, or DARK? ...they don't (in my VERY limited experience) behave intuitively... but might do more of what you want. Since you can change exposure settings between exposures, one of the alternative modes may very well be usable for you?

 

For something like this, the only way to see if it's going to work for YOU is going to be by setting up the tripod and get shooting. Luckily the film is virtually free!

Edited July 29, 2018 by Marcus Ian

As Marcus pointed out, there are multiple modes that can be used creatively. As far as HDR, the camera has that mode built in also.