I' d forgotton how messy the whole process of creating an article was! but here goes, anyway.

SMOKE PHOTOGRAPHY

Who says smoking is bad for you? try some of this in a small room and you will soon feel relaxed!

Equipment:

camera - yep, fraid so. If you aint got one read no further!

Remote flash unit - preferably two

lots of black card

A non reflective black background - I use either a laptray which has black cloth underneath or and old black t-shirt. If you want to get REALLY professional and spare no expense you can buy some black cloth from your local market for about 99p.

A torch or source of light with a concentrated beam. i use a Pringles tube with a lamp shoved inside it.

Some incense sticks or cones. A box to hold cone or stick holder. Don't matter what scent, just ask for smokey ones.

 

OK? so far, so good?

heres the piccies to help explain further if any needed.....

 

remote flash unit set to half power -i use two of these set at 90 degrees to the smoke column

wirelesss trigger for the flash units -fits to camera hotshoe

 

little box to hold smelly cone. Box has holes in lid so can use either open for a single column or closed to dissipate the smoke a little.

the whole setup as it looks - very basic but it works.

the main thing is to avoid ANY stray light whatsoever hitting the backdrop. thats why there is so much black stuff around.

here i am using the underside of a laptray as the backdrop.

the smoke box is placed as far away from the backdrop as possible to ensure the light is concentrated on the smoke and to lessen chance of stray light hitting backdrop.

there is black card shielding the flash units from the backdrop.

i have also placed a couple of black paint trays on the table to minimise any light reflection from the table. One day i will get round to painting the tabletop black !

the Pringles light....... below shows what it is for.

it is not to provide extra lighting.

as you are manually focussing, you need to see the smoke in a dark room. the pringles beam shines directly at the smoke column enabling you to focus in the dark.

this photo was taken with wide angle lens just to demonstrate. The lens i use for the actual photos is 100mm so all the camera sees is the smoke and the backdrop.

some results below.

you can get some great effects by creating an inverted layer, saving it, and then adding colour, saturation, contrast etc.

 

 

camera settings for all the photos:

1/160 sec

f9

100mm fixed lens

iso 200

spot metering - not that it matters i dont think

manual focus

 

more examples can be seen on the Smokin blog:

http://www.myfinepix.ca/blog/55737/408963