Nothing "Smoky" about it

[Prateek123]

Hey guys, here are few SMOKY shots taken by me some time ago when I bought my first DSLR (Canon Eos 1000D).
I hope you like 'em.
How I did it:-
Things needed:- 1 table lamp/any other bright source of light
1 incense stick, choose a thicker one preferably for better/dense smoke. In this case I have used something known as "dhoop-batti". Have some reserve ones too in case the first one dies out.
Black background, I did it with a black cotton curtain cloth.
Camera (obviously) and an empty room with no lights on.
Setup:-
- Place a lamp/light source on left or right of the incense stick somewhat lower with an angle of 45-80 Deg.
- Place an incense stick (or dhoop batti) on a table with a support pref. a needle or tooth pick
- Set a black background to have a good tone of the color of smoke
- Place a camera on tripod with flash OFF almost 4-5 feet away from the object. If you have zoo/telephoto, you may want to increase this length and have distant shot, but I prefer closer for sharpness.
- If you want to have sharp crisp images, increase the shutter speed to around 1/200 or more.
- Set all the fans or source of air OFF, avoid any movement around
- Aperture can be around f8.0-f11 depending upon the lens and distance from the object.
- Use Manual Focus for better focus as the smoke shall be wobbling continuously.
- If your camera has LIVE view use it to adjust the point of focus and DOF
- Take some sample shots and decide how you would want to capture the patterns
- blow some air gently using a sheet of paper or such material, you will see some patterns and at the right moment, Bam!! click!
You may want to try Burst mode, didn't work for me well as I was more interested in LIVE view to get exact patterns I was hoping for.
Post Processing:-
Using canon digital professional, I used AWB to flash or tungsten to have a nice blue color.
Adjusted the brightness and contrast to get a clear black surrounding. Worked for saturation and sharpness on some of the images.
Thanks for reading.

[Marija]

nice...have to try!

[patriciam]

I'm going to try this tonight. I'll post if it works for me.

[precious]

Thanks. Great shots and simple instructions. Adding to my to-do list.

[Roo13]

Great explanation. Thanks.

[patriciam]

I couldn't get it to work at all. I'll take the instructions to my college instructor and ask her what I did wrong. I'll get back to you if I come up with any answers.

[swoffa]

Originally Posted by patriciam

I couldn't get it to work at all. I'll take the instructions to my college instructor and ask her what I did wrong. I'll get back to you if I come up with any answers.

Hope you don't mind me offering some advice on your thread Prateek123.

When I had a go at this, I realised I had to GoBO the flash. Without that, the flash would light the background. And that just threw the whole shot out. I used a couple of the kids big hardcover books either side of the speedlight.

[Prateek123]

I'm not sure if the FLASH stuff would work in this case. I had my on camera flash turned OFF intentionally neither I have any remote flash system so my first thought was having a bright-light continuous source ideally a table lamp (unfortunately thats the best form of lighting I have as of today )
If you have a reflector lamp, place it almost 45-60 degrees left or right of the object as I mentioned. and try not get light rays hitting the lens, it may cause a flare!
You may use a hood if you want to. Also, if you are having a black background, you may want to increase the distance between the object and the background so that the impact of the light is minimal at the back. If you are ok to work with +/-EV you can try that too but I'm worried if this might cause the sharpness/color of the smoke to loose its grace.
Please let me know if this helps or if you come up with some better ideas. I would love to go at it again

[sowmyav82]

Thanks Prateek. I tried it out with your instructions and got some decent shots