Understand multiple exposure.

New to the forum so before I ask my question I want to say hello to everone who reads this.

I just picked up a Nikon D700. Upgrade from D40. WOW! What a jump. The D700 has a 2-10 multiple exposure. I understand using it for image overlay I think that is common sense. When I research this setting this is the most common thing I will find. Nikon says it can be used for enhancing color. Can this be used to increase detail of an image for making sharp posters or enhanced details? Can this be used to increase pixels and pixel dimmension? For example is a 2 exposure 24 megapixels or a 10 exposure 120 megapixels or does the camera just compress it all back down to 12 megapixels?

interesting, I have only used it to make actual multiple exposures like film days, but I wonder if you vary the exposure if it can be another means of HDR, I would need to research this myself.

but to answer your question, the camera is merging the data, and not increasing the file size, so if you take a 5 shot image, to my knowledge, the image remains the size of the approx the single image, and not 5 times larger to say 80 Megs.

Thanks. Makes sense. I was told but I don't know for sure myself that you can not use multiple exposure for HDR. My understanding is you have to bracket and merge in software for that. I believe the D600 and D800 can merge multiple exposure to HDR from some video I watched on those ones.

I think what they are saying is you can squeeze a few stops extra DR out of it.

Why would I google bracketing? I have produced hundreds of HDR photos with multiple cameras. I have read the manual over and over. The manual is not specific about the data that you get from the multiple exposure mode. Multiple exposure is not bracketing atleast in my D700. Bracketing is a totaly seperate thing from my question. As far as I know the multiple exposure mode does not change the exposure level but just lays the same exposure over and over on itself. I am trying to understand why I would do that. Bracketing produces different exposures and in the D700 they are not overlayed. You have to do that in software. Multiple exposure goes up to 10 times and the bracketing is 9 times. I see no need at this point in even bothering with the multiple exposure option.

To answer your question " why would I do that ? " - in the old days of film - we would have produced a multiple exposure image for many reasons - a good example would have been a child doing somersaults across a room or garden - or diving off a high diving boards - I know you can now merge multiple shots in software - but some cameras allow you to be creative in camera rather !

I tried multiple exposure for the first time a couple weeks ago for another reason. I wanted to expose the interior light on the caboose more so I exposed once with the flood and interior light on and once again with the flood light off. Worked pretty good.

Nice. Sort of an in-camera HDR photo.

I was thinking that Jake and wondered what other everyday scenes this might work for.

I'm not sure if it's an available feature of the D700, but my D600 has an in-camera HDR function that might be easier to use than the Multiple exposure setting. Or you can just bracket several individual exposures and do your HDR processing outside the camera, which can yield a much wider array of results, from very natural to surreal. There are several ways to accomplish this, and tools range from freeware to detailed software packages. Check out the HDR forum here for some idea of what you can do.