Photography Question

[Ithaca]

I have a friend that wants to have multiple pictures of himself breakdancing in the same room. Like he has four of his clones dancing with him. I thought about photoshop but I don't think it would look very real. Is there a camera setting for this type of thing or a way to do this with a program? Thank you. :)

[Yeldarb]

You could try multiple exposures, it's a little tricky, but it may do the trick (if you're not familiar with it, it's taking one image over another.

Photoshop is probably going to be more precise though. Take several images of him and put them on top of each other. Make sure the images are exactly the same except for him and it should be pretty easy. Put the camera on a tripod so you're sure it doesn't move between pictures.

[=guinness=]

Yeldarb is right. Its ghost images on film/ multiple exposures on the same frame.

What you do:
-Block (plan) what your friend will do so he will know where to pose.
-Have your camera on tripod, a black card, no light on camera (if possible)
-Use the B (Bulb) setting on camera
*put friend in position 1, expose for a certain time WITH BULB STILL GOING
*put black card in front of lens to block light, let him move to next position
*repeat as needed and close the shutter.

Because of how the film works, in the final positive print, all of the areas that were in shadow will look transparent because those parts of the film did not react to light until the other parts of exposure had light reflect onto it.

All of the light areas will be solid/mostly solid and all black will be transparent.

PS. It is easiest and most effective to use a single light source.

In one of my classes a guy did an exposure of him playing a game of poker with himself in every seat.

[unchew]

Wow thats a great tutorial! Thanks for that!

[Krilnon]

You could also try using a strobe light and a really slow shutter speed…

[anif]

wow, i luv this thread, didn't know that could be easily done with a camera. I got a question though, is this only for film camera or does it apply to digital as well. How can it be done with a digital camera, is it the same process, like the "bulb" setting you mentioned (what setting is that)?

[iLikePie]

umm i thought that using that slow-development method would make all the people semi-transparent because they'd only be in each position for about a 1/4 of the total photo time... no?

you could do it quite effectively in photoshop by setting up the light source and tripod, and then just taking 4 separate photographs and masking the person from each photo into the one photo.
but there is something nice about doing it all in the camera (i.e no manipulation).

[punkerton]

my friend and i did a similar thing with a panorama program. we took pictures around a room with multiples of each of us. the downside of that method is the pic is really long and there needs to be space between each "instance" of the person.