Need double exposure capabiliy

[acmesriley]

I've been using a Pentex Optio 450, 4.0 megapixel. I want to get a newer camera but I have to be able to do multiple exposures on the same frame. Please help if you know of a camera that would meet my needs. Thanks

[Franglais]

I don't know of any. It is so easy to combine multiple pictures in software. Why want to do it in the camera?

[acmesriley]

I prefer to know that I created the image on one frame in the camera.

[N0BOX]

There just isn't "one frame" in a digital camera. The only way I can imagine making this happen would be to use the AutoHDR mode in some camera (e.g. the Sony NEX-5N) and manage to take both exposures somehow within the 3 shots the camera takes in less than a second. Basically, it's impossible given today's digital cameras unless you were to write your own firmware to add that feature. No one has come up with that feature because it is child's play to make that happen in Photoshop or GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). If you can't afford Photoshop, or if you would prefer to use free and open source software, then GIMP is available for free for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux (or can be compiled from their source code for many other systems).

The only way I can think to do it your way (in-camera) would be to grab an old 35mm film camera cheap on ebay, do it for real on actual film, then after having the film developed run it through a scanner.

Edit: Keep in mind that I don't have experience with all digital cameras (or many, for that matter), so it's possible that this might exist... I just can't think of any reason why a manufacturer would include a feature like this in a digital camera.

[wfooshee]

I, too, am having difficulty conceptualizing the need to do this in camera rather than in software.

In a film double-exposure, both images are present, and the overall image is probably overexposed due to two metered exposures having been made.

In digital, the image read during exposure is saved to a file and the buffer cleared for the next image. A double exposure would simply add the next exposure to the same file, exactly the same thing as pasting both onto a common frame (with some transparency so both can show) in Photoshop or GIMP. Probably better in software than in the camera, actually, now that I think about what the camera would have to do to "mix" the files.

In the digital world, "in-camera" and "in software" aren't really two separate universes like they are when you shoot film. The software is an extension of the camera, that's all.

To the original question, I don't know of a digital camera capable of mixing exposures into a single image in-camera.

[SmartWombat]

Nikon D2X, Fiji FInePix S1Pro and S2Pro, just wiht a few minutes of googling ...

[wares]

the overall image is probably overexposed due to two metered exposures having been made.

[Donna7]

What would be the several sorts Of Coloured Lens Filters For electronic Cameras?

[wfooshee]

Well, isn't this embarrassing? After stating before that I didn't know of any, I've found while looking through my manual for something else that my Nikon D5000 does this, calling it Image Overlay in the Retouch menu. You pick two RAW images from the memory card and the camera creates a new image from the two.

How that differs from doing it on the computer I couldn't say, although the manual states that they are "noticeably better than overlays created in an imaging application." It's "in-camera," but only to the extent that two separate files are mixed by the camera's brain, not that they are actually shot as a double exposure.

I'm not sure it matters, though, the OP doesn't appear to have returned since his second post.

[Greg McCary]

I think several of the Olympus cameras do this. The E-620 and the EPL-1.

[N0BOX]

Well, I guess I feel dumb, now. I just can't imagine why a camera would have the ability to do this when it would be so much easier to do this in Photoshop in two seconds and with much better control over the mix.

Then again, not everyone can afford Photoshop... It is rather expensive, and not everyone is going to have heard about The GIMP.