How to photograph smoke?

Question

I have been trying to get images of smoke against a black background has anyone got any advice on the best way to do this and a good lens choice and lighting set up for the job.

Answer 1

Taking the pictures

• use a joss stick, plenty of smoke and lasts a while. when the room gets smoky, open the widows to get rid of the smoke, this will increase contrast in your pictures
• i used a telephoto, it minimises the size of the backdrop needed.
• make sure the backdrop is black
• use a flash camera left or right, and use a snoot to ensure the flash doesnt fall on the lens / backdrop. i used 2 cereal boxes to block the light
• use a desktop lamp to light the smoke for autofocus
• recommended camera settings to start - iso 100/200, 1/250s shutter speed, f8.
• dont use a tripod, the patterns in the smoke will move and a tripod will hinder you
• alternatively, if you do use a tripod, just have the prefocus on the tip of the joss stick, switch to manula focus and crop the pictures later.

Post Processing

• use levels to make the background completely black.
• use the healing brush tool t remove any stubborn non-black areas in the background
• use a black brush to trim any unwanted areas of smoke
• load a channel as selction (try all of them to see what's best)
• create new layer from selection, fill white

then you can paint colours or use a colour grad-filter.

Links that i found useful:-

• http://sensitivelight.com/photographingsmoke/
• http://vimeo.com/4698985

ps i'm no expert, but the above seems to get decent pics:-

Answer 2

Like in many other technical situation, the key is the right lighting setup (the lens has a very small importance). You should flash the smoke from the side, making sure you don't illuminate the black background.

YouTube has many video tutorials on that (search "smoke photography"). Here's a random one.

Answer 3

It depends how serious you want to get with it, but if you just want to try it, I recommend using an incense stick for the smoke source as it gives a constant stream, and shine a torch through the smoke at an angle.