Capturing Smoke

22Feb10

Smoke can create some unique wispy movement and you can capture this with your camera to create funky art.

There are two methods that can be used when capturing smoky movement with your camera.

With a table lamp, flash gun (off camera), black background, incense stick and your camera.
With one or two powerful table lamps, black background, incense stick and your camera.

Method 1

You will need a way of firing a flash gun off camera, this may be via a sync cable, wireless trigger or an optical trigger. You will also need a black background around 3-4 times bigger than your setup or a way of controlling the ambient light around you. A few incense sticks, lighter or matches and a table lamp.

The Setup
My setup included a black sheet draped over my curtains, a table lamp, flash gun fired with CTR-301P’s and an incense stick.

The table lamp lights up the smoke enough for your camera’s auto focus to pick it up. When your ready with the shot and press the shutter, the flash illuminates the smoke to give you that lovely wispy movement.

I used my Sony A200 with a 28mm lens at f9-15 and switched between auto and manual focus.

Method 2

For this method to work you will need a gap of around 6 feet from the background and incense stick. This should help maintain the pure black background. One of the lamps should be positioned on the side as in method 1 and the other lamp should be positioned slightly behind the incense stick at a slight angle. Be careful that the second lamp does not cause flare on your lens.

You will notice slight flare in these two, it will have to be Photoshoped out.