Will multiple exposures or one long exposure give better outcome for silky water?

Question

I have a Nikon D700 which can take up to 10 multiple exposure in camera.

I have a Samyang manual 14 mm lens ( brand new lens) with no filter thread for ND filters.

I am visiting Iceland next month and wish to do long exposures photographing the sea shore and waterfalls.

What would be the best outcome re silky or almost silky water.

1.. Using in camera multiple exposure putting the camera on manual mode.

2. putting the camera on Aperture priority.

3. Slowing down the shutter speed or using a fast shutter speed to stop the water.

I am trying to find out the most effective as well as the easiest to obtain the desired results.

Another question . Is it possible to bracket exposures when using the multiple exposure option on the Nikon D700.

Unfortunately I not the most technical person on the planet and would be grateful for detailed how to tips.

thank you

Answer 1

I do not know about the in camera multiple exposure capabilities of your camera; however, others have faced this issue with a DIY approach and an ND filter.

Photoshop can also be used to combine multiple exposures, I have also used photoshop to simulate long exposures, this works quite well. The trick is to blend each layers with half the opacity of the previous layer, e.g. your first layer is at 100%, then 50%, 25%, 12%, etc. You can also take sets of photos combine them into layer groups and then blend them if you have many frames.

Answer 2

I have only tried using multiple exposures to blur water a few times, but found it was too much of a hassle to continue doing it. This is with an old Pentax camera though so the experience may be significantly better with a D700. With my camera, I had to enter the multiple exposure mode for each series of shots, and hit the shutter button for the correct number of shots, which meant using a remote shutter release to make sure exposures stayed aligned.

If you can get a reasonably long exposure on each frame (maybe around 1/10 to 1/4 second?), I think you can get good results that are indistinguishable from a longer exposure, at least in some cases. I suspect it will work better with streams and waterfalls than the seashore, and better with wide lenses than tele lenses, because of the amount of change between each frames. If you try it with a shutter speed that is too fast, you'll probably see the individual frames when they're blended together, but it will depend on the picture. So I would go with the longest shutter speed I could get, then add multiple exposures if I wanted the water to be more silky. And take advantage of the lower light levels during the long sunrises and sunsets in Iceland if you can.

I'm not familiar with the multiple exposure controls on a D700, but you'll want a mode where it averages the pictures instead of adds them so the final picture will have the same exposure as the individual ones. If the D700 can lock the exposure settings for the duration of the multiple exposures, I'd use aperture priority if that's what you normally use.