Between The Sprockets A photography blog

Multiple Exposure Experiment

I had read about film swaps before, and the idea had me interested, but the logistics and time involved put me off.  A few weeks back I decided I could do my own film swap, with the added bonus of knowing what was on the film already.

For those that don't know, film swaps are when you shoot a roll of film then rewind it, but not all the way.  You have to leave the leader out (some cameras do this, others don't have the option.  With manual cameras you can feel when the film leader is released from the opposite spool while rewinding it) so the film is use-able again.  You package the film up and send it to the other person, and they shoot it as per normal.  When the film is developed you get a roll of double exposures (2 photos taken on top of each other on the film), and you don't know what they will look like until they are developed.

I decided to skip the unpredictable results and sending to someone else parts, and do my own film swap.  I set about creating some simple black and white patterns on my computer, then used the whole roll up by taking 6 photos of each pattern.  I made them full screen on my laptop, then took a full frame shot on my Konica Autoreflex-T with a 57mm 1.4 lens.  here's the patterns I used:

(1280x800, because that's the resolution of my laptop.  Feel free to download and use them yourself.)

Once all these were shot (6 shots each on a roll of 36 exposures) I rewound the film until I felt the leader release from the take-up spool, then reloaded it.  It was then time to head out and get some shots.

This part took weeks, mostly because of a run of bad weather, then me forgetting about it for a couple of weeks.  I looked at the camera last night and only 27 shots were taken.  I decided that was enough, as I really wanted to see how it turned out.  In the end, it turned out...

Great!  Some of the patterns didn't work very well, and most of the shots didn't line up with the pattern frames, but this made the shots all the better.  Some of the shots have two different patterns overlapping them, making some strange effects.

Overall, I highly recommend giving this a shot.  Experiment with creating patterns (I used various filters and render command in The GIMP) and find out what works.

My only advice would be this: I used 100 iso film, and for most of the shots I exposed bot h frames at 100 iso.  Depending on your pattern, this can cause overexposure.  I would suggest (if your camera allows it) you underexpose your shots slightly.  Only by as much as half a stop, 1 stop would probably be too much.

You can check out the ones that worked on my Double Exposure Experiment flickr set.