How to do creative smoke photography
Smoke photography is easy to do at home and can be a lot of fun, I use incense sticks to produce the smoke and using different techniques allows you to produce some stunning results, but be prepared to take lots of shots to get the ones you like.
Equipment
Camera
Lens – 90mm Macro or 85mm, or zoom
Tripod
External Camera Release
Off Camera Flash + Trigger (I am going to trigger flash manually and not from the camera). Position the Flash to the side of the incense stick aiming for where the smoke will be.
Snoot (This is a tube to restrict the light from the flash to the smoke without lighting the background). You can just use some rolled up card around the flash.
Incense Sticks and Lighter
Patience
Basic setup
Position Incense Stick (unlit) and pre-focus, then set to manual focus. Tip: If room not bright then set ISO really high, focus, switch to manual focus and set ISO back low
set aperture to around F8-14 (for a deeper depth of field).
Set ISO 100 or lower
Vibration (& Noise) Reduction: Off
Close curtains and take test shot without flash with camera in bulb mode, the goal is to have a black photo. I set the camera to Bulb mode so that shutter can be open as long as needed (even up to 10 secs)
First Shots
Light the incense stick, Darken Room (Close curtains, lights off) and open the Camera shutter.
Fire the Flash manually (this allows you to take multiple exposure shots on the same exposure)
Close Camera Shutter
Experiment with…
Colour Filters
Flash Position (Move Up/Down etc)
Blow or move hands over smoke
Multiple Incense Sticks
Different backgrounds
Multiple Flash Units
Some Examples
