Simple Tips for Smoke Photography
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I recently did a tutorial for my camera club on smoke and steam photography. In building the content for the tutorial I discovered a number of good tips and a number of ways that would make one a bit nuts. So I thought I would offer a short article on how to do this because it is fun and challenging.
I am going to assume that you want real smoke or steam not some phony AI effect or plugin to do this. If you want to go the fictitious route, go have fun, but this article is not likely to be for you.
What You Will Need and Do
Kit and Setup
You will want some form of very neutral background that will create a strong contrast between the smoke and itself. A black background is the easiest place to start because it provides isolation. You want to make sure that your smoke generating subject is well separated though because you really want that background to go completely black, particularly if your light source is large. I used a V Flat made from two pieces of black foam core from the dollar store and if doing again, would affix a piece of black flock material on top to cut all reflections off the foam core. You can get this in sheets or in rolls on Amazon. As I will next be doing a tutorial on black box photography, I have ordered a roll of the stuff which is already adhesive backed.
You should be shooting in RAW mode. While you will be demanding more contrast from this style of work, there is no value to throwing away over 90% of the data by shooting in JPEG Normal in your camera.
The example image is lit by ambient light coming through a patio door. It works, but that kind of nice soft light also has a lot of spill. I would propose as more workable alternatives either using an off camera flash in a small soft box or with a head mounted reflector, or a small flashlight with some parchment paper taped to the lens to provide a bit of diffusion. In either case, you are going to want to bring the light in close and do everything you can to prevent it from hitting the background.
The critical thing here is to light from the side, not from the front or the rear. You want maximum detail and variance and this light direction provides that
Whether you include your smoke generation piece in the image is your choice. In this example because I was experimenting and wanted something that would smoke for a long time, I used Japanese joss sticks in a holder tray. I prefer joss sticks to incense due to a perfume allergy, and the joss sticks only have a very mild sandalwood smell when smoking. When starting out, pick something that will generate continuous smoke. Steam is much harder as it is typically less dense and as the subject cools rapidly the steam disappears. You can find joss sticks on Amazon as well.
Prefocus on where the smoke will be. Note that autofocus probably will not work, so prefocus and then turn AF off. If you are worried about focus shift, use a small piece of gaffer tape to prevent the focus ring from moving.
Camera Settings
As you want best detail, go for a lower ISO. The example was made at ISO 100. You want a low ISO to keep the signal to noise ratio optimal and avoid the use of any noise reduction.
You also want to choose an aperture that will keep the smoke in focus but not much else. I call this just enough depth of field. In this example, I used a 100mm lens on a full frame camera and the aperture was f/5.6. I could have used a wider aperture and been successful.
As you are choosing the ISO and the Aperture, the one variable will be shutter speed. You can certainly use aperture preferred mode and fiddle with exposure compensation but to learn this effectively I recommend going to Manual mode, because you want to shoot and check that the background remains jet black and the smoke is as bright as possible. This is how I worked and as I wanted a sense of the smoke moving, I ended up with a shutter open time of 2 seconds. This means that the camera is on a tripod and I recommend this regardless of your light source.
I also recommend setting your camera to its slowest burst mode and trigger it with a remote cable or wireless type remote. The smoke is moving and you want a number of images to pick from before you get to the editing. You sure don’t need a hundred images at full burst, the smoke is not moving all that fast. Slow burst with 6-12 images is all you will typically need.
Post Processing
Once you are done, bring your images into your editor. Select the one that you want to spend time on. Choose an image with a nice figure to it.
If you want to convert to monochrome, I recommend doing so early in your editing process. Both Lightroom Classic and Adobe Camera Raw do excellent monochrome conversions including a number of available filter treatments but Nik Silver Efex Pro is still an optimal choice if you already own it.
While I usually eschew the Contrast slider, you can increase the contrast with it to get a sense of where you are going. My preference however is to use a Curves adjustment to bring down the blacks and raise the whites as the means to increase contrast.
Also use your tone sliders, typically called black, white, shadows and highlights to adjust until you like what you see.
Once you are at a look that you like, sharpen the image before export. If you use Lightroom Classic or Adobe Camera RAW, use the Alt/Option key masking technique so you only sharpen the smoke and not anything else.
Now check for any dust spots or bits of ash in the air and use your spot removal tool of choice to get rid of them. Congratulations, you are now done!
But maybe not. Nothing prevents you from being more creative at the image making phase. Perhaps put a coloured filter over your light source, of if your camera supports multiple exposures, use a different coloured filter for each of the shots that you will put together. If your camera does not do multiple exposures itself, you can always use Photoshop or a similar tool to make a composite of multiple shots. Experimenting with layer blend modes, as well as diving into Blend-If scenarios can be a real exercise in fun and learning.
Wrap Up
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