alignment of multiple exposures

[Vaughn]

And if you use peanut butter, make sure it is not the chunky variety...

[E. von Hoegh]

And if you use peanut butter, make sure it is not the chunky variety...

I like your idea of painting the forest floor, I'll be doing that this spring.

[Peter Gomena]

A little double-stick tape in the center of the holder will do it. The key is to either not press the film too hard against the tape or to touch the tape a few times with your finger to reduce its stickiness before you load the film.

Be sure also that your second exposure is at the same aperture as the first exposure or you risk creating a doubled image due to slightly differing image size. Change only the exposure time.

Peter Gomena

[Vaughn]

I like your idea of painting the forest floor, I'll be doing that this spring.

I have not yet gotten an image I am extremely pleased with. It is hard to maintain a good composition when the composition keeps changing on you! But go for it!

Vaughn

[Lon Overacker]

I don't know if anyone has addressed this part of the process, but the issue goes beyond just getting the film lined up in the holder. There's also the scanning process. There is really NO way that you can go end to end and expect that you can have two identical sheets of film (not with standing exposure and time differences.) Think about it, even if you can flatten out the the film with a drum scanner, you still have two distinct scans. It's not the same as two digital exposures. The only equivalent there would be if you exchanged the cmos sensors between exposures.

Having said that, the answer I've found is simply masking the two exposures. Surely there are smaller areas that you want to bring in from one exposure, so really you don't need to align the entire surface area of the scan. Do your best to align the important area that you wish to "blend" between the two exposures and mask out the rest that you don't care about. And if, for example you have two or more lampposts in the dusk exposure that aren't lining up in a single layer, then just add a third layer and deal with one lamppost at a time.

In the end, it's quite difficult, if not impossible to line up two exposed sheets of film starting from the the film holders all the way through the scan. But it will be easier if you just align the smaller section of the scan that you wish to blend and then who cares about the rest, just keep it masked out.

Lon