Candles & Smoke

LiquidAir

I have seen some nice smoke shots around recently so I decided to try shooting some of my own. I am still trying to get the hang of how to set the exposure for these.

1.

2.

3.

Eric&Susan

This is something that I have always wanted to try.

I'm diggin' that 2nd one

Eric

Seneca

Very cool...very nice. Great job!

Rhuarc

I prefer the first one the best, just because the candle isn't as brightly lit. It reminds me of how things might look right AFTER a candle is blown out, as opposed to the other two which are brighter. Great smoke curls in all of them though!!

Skippy

LiquidAir wrote:

I have seen some nice smoke shots around recently so I decided to try shooting some of my own. I am still trying to get the hang of how to set the exposure for these.

1.
2.
3.

Wow .......that first one is kinda creepy, like a morph, you can even make out a face in the smoke

They all look good, how have you got the light set up to capture the smoke trails ??? they are very well captured, images are nice and sharp too.

I like 'em .... .Skippy
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LiquidAir

Thanks, all. I was thinking of Macbeth as I shot these (Out, out, brief candle! Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.) The first shot is what I was imagning when set it up--the smoke bright and just a hint of the candle. The others came from experimenting with the setup. There is only one light for this. A flash (580EX) on a stand just out of the frame to camera left with a homemade spot grid velcroed to it for a narrower beam. I had a room light on when I was shooting, but the flash overpowered it by enough to make the background black. The first two were shot on a cutting board; the third on a sheet of black foam core.

While shooting I learned something about candles. When you blow a candle out it smokes while the tip of the wick burns down to the top of the wax line. After lighting and blowing out each candle out the wick burned down to just a little stub and the next time I lit it and blew it out I didn't get much smoke. As a result I only really got one useful run out of each candle before I had to scrounge for another one. I think I need to let the candles burn a while to get the longer wick back.

Other suggestions for shooting smoke:

Shoot all manual and chimp the histogram to get the exposure right.
Set the flash on about 1/4 power to get lots of light with a reasonable cycle time.
Set your shutter speed to your max synch speed so the background stays as dark as possible.
Use a tripod and remote release; frame the shot in advance.
Once the smoke starts fire off shots as fast as your flash recharges.

Awais Yaqub

these are beautiful