In Camera Additive Composite

[smoke665]

Haven't experimented much with the composite features on K1MII, a colorful sky after a rain the other night seemed like a good opportunity. The first image is a one shot standard exposure, to illustrate the dynamic range of the shot.

moon sky09262018_153.jpg by William Raber, on Flickr

The second shot is a 3 shot additive in camera composite.

moon sky09262018_155.jpg by William Raber, on Flickr

Unlike an HDR which combines over and under exposures, the additive combines multiple exposures of the same settings, stacking them one on top of the other. The other difference is the HDR fires one after another until the stack is completed, but the time you can have between shots on the additive is unlimited. I learned fairly quickly that the SR ability of the camera to align the images decreased dramatically with more then 3 shots, even with little time between shots. The other thing noticed is that since each exposure compounds the amount of light in the image, it required a significant reduction to exposure, to prevent completely blowing the highlights.

I'm anxious to try this in a setting where there is a stationary object with moving objects around it. The camera offers two other composite modes, Bright, which combines only the brightest pixels in each image, and Average, which averages all the exposures to arrive at a composite.