What’s Your Preference?

JKJD · #1 (**permalink**) 03-10-2010, 08:16 AM

I posted some pictures of smoke art in the "Other - SYS" forum and got lots of questions on how I took them. So I figured that I would post here how I did it.

Materials needed:

1. Black backdrop. I used a couple yards of fleece that I picked up from the local fabric store really cheap. You could also use felt, black muslin, or velvet (if you want to shell out the cash for it). What you don't want is a light material like cotton that will reflect the light. You want something to absorb it.

2. Off camera flash gun. You can try it with really bright lights, but I don't believe you will get very good results. I had an SB-600 with an ebay remote trigger.

3. Small desk lamp. This is for lighting the smoke so your camera can focus on it. This is not to illuminate it for the picture. That's what the flash is for. You don't want a super bright lamp. I think mine had a 40w bulb in it.

4. Black thick posterboard or plastic. This will be used to create some homemade barn doors for your flash to keep the light from spilling over to your background.

5. Incense stick. You can try other methods for producing the smoke, but incense works the best. You can pick that up almost anywhere for next to nothing.

The setup:

As you can see in the picture, I have the desk lamp on one side, the flash on the other, with the incense in the middle. I cut out some simple sqaures with the black posterboard and attatched them to the flash gun using a high tech securing device (a rubber band). This will keep the light from the flash from hitting the background and causing lens flare. I found that if I raised the flash gun and angled it down towards the smoke that I was able to pretty much light it all.

Camera and flash settings:

I set my flash to half power and zoomed in as far as I could. You just want to light the smoke and nothing else.

I set my camera to manual and started with an F/11. After I took a few shots, I changed that to F/13 because I was getting too much light. I set the shutter speed to 1/250. With the remote triggers, you want your shutter speed to be slightly less than your cameras flash sync speed. Most entry level DSLR will sync around 1/200 - 1/250. Find out what speed your camera syncs at and then take it down one. This is to allow for any delay that might occur with the remote trigger. Around 1/160 or 1/200 will be fine for most cameras. I was using a 55-200mm standard zoom lens.

The shot:

Turn on the desk lamp and light the incense. The lamp will light up the smoke so that your camera can see it to autofocus. Don't worry, it won't show up in the picture. Watch the smoke and when you see good swirls and patterns appear, snap away. Remember to check your screen to make sure you are not getting too much or not enough light. Adjust your apeture accordingly. If your smoke becomes boring, simply give a gentle blow or wave of the hand to wake it back up again. Zoom out and get the tip of the incense stick in some shots. That can add a pretty cool aspect.

Post production:

You'll have to do a little work in photoshop. You'll probably have to bring up the black levels just a tad to get the pure black background and to get rid of any stray dust or smoke streaks. Go easy with this, as too much will ruin the effect of the shot. Any left over spots can be taken care of with the paint brush.

Do some basic cropping to get the look you want. Add an adjustment layer to change to color of the smoke. If you want the white background, simply invert the image. There are a million tutorials online about this. Just google it.

The finished product:

After all of that, you end up with this. Check out my other ones in the SYS forum or on my flickr page and let me know what you think! First attempts at smoke

avishek24 · #2 (**permalink**) 03-10-2010, 08:45 AM

Thanks for putting this up JKJD. There is one problem though. I dont have any flash guns. The only flash that I have is the in built flash on my camera. Is there anything that can be done so that I can click the pictures using just that? Otherwise, the only light source I could use was the desk lamp and that wasnt allowing me to get anywhere near f11.

JKJD · #3 (**permalink**) 03-10-2010, 03:27 PM

You can use other lights, but it's not easy. You'd need like 1000w lamps. You really need that bright quick flash to freeze the smoke

PowerPix · #4 (**permalink**) 03-10-2010, 03:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by avishek24

Thanks for putting this up JKJD. There is one problem though. I dont have any flash guns. The only flash that I have is the in built flash on my camera. Is there anything that can be done so that I can click the pictures using just that? Otherwise, the only light source I could use was the desk lamp and that wasnt allowing me to get anywhere near f11.

It can be done. I don't have a flash head or any extra gear. These were shot with only the on-camera flash:

avishek24 · #5 (**permalink**) 03-10-2010, 03:46 PM

Those are some really nice pics, PowerPix. I like the first one specially. My problem is that I just cant seem to get a clear focus in the pictures. Maybe because of the low light. I will try taking some pictures with the in built flash soon and see how they turn out. Thanks!

Jonathan Evans · #6 (**permalink**) 03-14-2010, 06:23 AM

Hi avishek,

Here are some examples I have done with the on camera flash only...I do have an old flash gun, but I don't yet have a synch cable for my new Canon 50D...I believe once I get this it will be a bit easier to take smoke pictures. The main difficulty with using the on camera flash is the background being lit, which makes the post-processing harder (especially if you want to change the background to white by inverting the image). Good luck with it...it's good fun :-)

You can really see the background artifacts in the second picture very clearly as a result of too much light hitting the background.

avishek24 · #7 (**permalink**) 03-16-2010, 09:06 AM

Thanks a ton Jonathan. I will try this out soon and post results. Just seems like the post processing is going to take a while for the precise reason that you mentioned. But I would say that the results that you got seem very much worth it. Thanks again!