Since next week's assignment is smoke, I wanted to try my hand at photographing smoke again. I'd previously read
this tutorial, but my first attempt a few months back didn't turn out very well, mainly because of a lack of light. I still don't have a flash, but my setup was slightly different this time.
Gear used:
- Nikon D50
- Nikkor 70-300mm f/4-5.6G lens
- Tripod and Remote
- Black piece of fabric
- Incense
- 500 watt halogen work light (which was under $15 at the hardware store) similar to this
My favourite shot of the set was this one:
The settings used were:
ISO: 200
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/100
Focal Length: 85mm
Post Processing:
Of course, smoke shots look their best when they have colour applied to them. So, to do this, I used Photoshop, but I'm quite sure it can be done in other programs. First I cropped the photo and adjusted the white balance in Adobe Camera Raw. I used the auto white balance setting and this took away some of the yellow-ish hue that the work light had given it. Next, I adjusted the levels bringing the black slider slightly to the right and moved the white slider to the left so that the white popped more from the black. I applied the unsharp mask at 125%, 1 px. Also, some of the light was showing, so I edited that out.
Now, I added the colour. I created a new layer and filled it using a gradient. I picked one of the preset gradients for this one, but some of the other ones were colours of my choice. I then set the blending mode for the layer with the gradient to "Color" and then adjusted the opacity slightly. Some didn't need the color opacity changed, but I found that when I used blue, the opacity needed to be decreased anywhere between 10-50%.
The rest of today's smoke photos can be seen in
this set.
And that's how I took it
