Thank you for your lovely comments; I’m pleased that my efforts produced some reasonable results as the 1st session proved awful! Here is a very useful YouTube “
how to” that I should have watched before I started, it would have saved me a few frustrating hours!
What I found useful:
- A darkish room so that you can see the smoke plume in the beam of a torch, for focusing, etc.
- A torch for highlighting the smoke plume for visibility, not to illuminate it for the exposure – that will be done by the camera flash.
- A well ventilated room so you do not choke on the smoke.
- No breeze as the slightest wind makes the smoke deviate.
- F8-F16 for max depth of field as the smoke plume moves and dances around.
- Manually focus the camera; I used remote Live View tethered to my Notebook computer.
- Dangle a white piece of cord down from the rafters in the plane of the smoke to assist with manual focusing.
- Use an off-camera flash; I don’t have one so I had to increase the distance of the background to avoid it intruding through being illuminated by the camera flash.
- Plenty of practice!
- Don’t do this around a smoke alarm!
- Double check that you safely extinguish any spent matches or incense sticks!
Some of the shots remind me of ghostly X-rays, quite spooky really!
Cheers
Dennis