STF mode in Maxxum 7 recreated for DSLR's

Nice experiment, thanks a lot for sharing

Actually DSLR's can do multiple exposures, its just ours that can't! I forget which bodies have it, but some definitely do, possibly the Fujifilm S5 or a Nikon body from memory.

Can't see why they can't do it in-camera with enough processing, would expect A850/900 to have the horsepower.

I must confess I have never tried the STF mode on my 7, but, you can guess what I will be doing later

mhohner wrote: Also note that with some lenses the focus shifts when stopping down. So the individual frames will not only have different bokeh and DOF, but also a different plane of focus. That's another advantage of a true STF lens.

Upon close inspection of the individual images from the 50mm, I didnt notice any real shift in focus between the different images. The focus may shift on other lenses, but I don't know.

The sharpness of the in-focus parts of the final composite seem to be on par with that of the image shot at f/3.5. Of the individual images, the one shot at f/3.5 is definitely the sharpest.

MarkSangenito wrote: Actually DSLR's can do multiple exposures, its just ours that can't! I forget which bodies have it, but some definitely do, possibly the Fujifilm S5 or a Nikon body from memory. count the canon 7d in there too, but I dont think that was intentional, haha. Really well done photoman, seems to work well, and a pretty ingenious process.

The a500/550's auto HDR mode is multiple exposure.

It was much simpler in the film days. Just don't move to the next and you'll get as many multiple exposures as you want. Especially where manual forwarding was required.
In DSLRs, the captured picture is written out to the card.
How will the camera know which image is to be superimposed on? Maybe the latest image? The user will probably have select a picture and tell the camera that multiple exposure is needed for that picture. The camera will end up taking a second picture and blend them together.
This is exactly what we do in an editor which supports layers. Maybe it's computationally expensive and hence isn't that widely supported.
Surely this is one of the most frequently requested features. There's gotta be a good explanation why it isn't supported widely.

If my Minolta XD7 can do multi exposures and came from eBay for less than a Sony strap, you would have thought an A900 could

Sure you can do it on computer, but the camera is a tool, and I have lots of tools that do the same job, but sometimes I prefer to use a certain type of tool to another, its nice to have an option.

skm.sa100 wrote: It was much simpler in the film days.

On my side, I find it easier in a DSLR. In the digital cameras featuring multi-exposure (I'm using a k20d myself, but several other ones also provide this feature), you can choose to either do an additive multi-exposure (in the same way as on film) or an averaging multi-exposure. While both modes have different uses, the possibility to let the camera handle the averaging itself ease the process.
If you want to combine 7 exposures (as an example), you can simply take 7 consecutive correctly exposed pictures. In the film days, you had to take 7 consecutive pictures exposed to 1/7th of a correct exposure. Of course you could do it, but automation doesn't hurt here.