See Below.. a Budget Solution to try Smoke Photography.
I still cannot afford an external Flash for my camera. At the same time, I did not have a table lamp too :-). All I had is two torch lights. I was inspired after watching the above video from Gavin Hoey, and got desperate to try out . Thank you Gavin, for your wonderful ideas that you share!
My friend Nizam and I set out trying to shoot this using all we could afford to find.
Items we Used :
- Torchlight – 2 No’s
Medium size Torch Light – alternative to the Lamp shown in Gavin Hoey’s video
Pocket Torch Light – alternative to the External Flash / Speedlight
- Tripod
- To prevent camera shake since I was shooting at around 1/40th of a second f/6.3 @ ISO 800
- Incense Sticks – 2 No’s
- A mesh Card holder
- To hold the two incense sticks
- Laptop Stand - 1 foot high
- To place the mesh card holder and the incense sticks on it
- Lighter
- Plain Black Cloth
- To have contrast between the smoke and the background so the smoke stands out in the scene.
- To have a non distracting background
- Remote Shutter Release
- To release the shutter while holding the Torch # 2 .
- Some Cardboard Boxes
- To Hold the Torch #1
- Wrapping Tape
I will first show you the images we were able to get with this budget setup
How we did this :
We started with the piece of black cloth(diagram 3). We taped it on the wall about 1 meter high. We placed my laptop stand in front of it at about a foot distance and left the incense sticks both placed parallel to each other, resting on the mesh card holder. We made sure that there was no gap between them and they stood at the same height. Once that was done, we taped the medium sized torch (Torch # 1 in the below diagram) on a cardboard box to direct the beam at an angle from the floor so it intersected the smoke a few centimeters from the tip of the incense sticks.
After that we lighted up the incense sticks to check whether the torch beam illuminated the smoke properly. We noticed that part of the torch beam was illuminating the black cloth placed in the background, so we taped a thick piece of paper on the side of the torch that was facing the black cloth in the background (similar to what Gavin does to his flash in the above video). This setup partially blocked the light from reaching the background while beautifully spreading the beam across the smoke spread by the incense sticks.
Now it was time to prepare the tripod and the camera. We adjusted the height of the tripod to about a feet and a half from the ground and had the camera mounted on it. I adjusted the angle of the camera so it was seeing the smoke at a point a little higher than the tip of the incense sticks.
I had to operate the camera while having to hand hold the second torch(Torch #2 from the below diagram). So I plugged in the remote shutter release on the camera to operate it from a distance.
We were doing this in our room at around 11:00 pm in the night, so we were forced to use slower shutter speeds. I was able to get shutter speed of 1/40th of a second , with the aperture set to f/6.3, ISO 800 at 50mm focal length. The camera was set to auto focus and once the camera focused on the tip of the incense sticks, I switched it back to manual focus so the focus stayed locked at that point. I re adjusted the camera position to make sure the tip of the incense stick wasn't showing on the frame
Everything seemed okay, but the only torch placed at the side of the laptop stand wasn't illuminating enough of the flame. So I took the pocket torch with the remote shutter release on my other hand and pointed it towards the incense sticks from the top.
I controlled the shutter release using the remote while slowly waving my hands towards the smoke to spread it in different directions.
The results were awsome!. you can see the images on my flickr stream; http://www.flickr.com/photos/djustified/
I recommend you to try this out at home.
Observations:
We shot 144 frames including the test shots
The background colour wasn't Black until I changed the metering mode to Spot metering. Before that it looked dull brown (similar to low quality film cameras)
The use of and external Flash could have brought more contrast on the smoke
See below diagrams that explain how we did this.
Setup Diagram
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