What's the trick to smoke photography?

[Raincheck]

Okay I had a go at it,

Set-up:
Black beach towel as background
One canon 580 EXII on the right hand side of the cigarette smoke
One small LED torch on the left hand side of the cigarette smoke
Hand held Canon 5D MII + 24 105 mm, Manual, F8, 1/250, ISO 100
Pocket wizard MiniTT1 + FlexTT5 to trigger the flash.



Ps. I used blinds like in the video to prevent light spill on your background...

 

[Groupcaptainbonzo]

I'm not sure if I'm reading the situation correctly, but it doesn't seem like you off-camera light is a flash....that's the key. You want off-camera lighting but it has to be a flash (or super bight constant light) in order to get the shot you want.

This is my interpretation of what is going on too.

You can't use a maglite/tac light/LEDs as the off camera light source. The above picture is a good example why. These constant light sources are not anywhere bright enough to achieve the correct effect. You really need a strobe (flash) ideally.

the OP says he is using his Dad's SB-800 If I'm not mistaken, he should be able to use that speedlight as an off camera slave with Nikon's CLS system using his popup set to -/- as a master. Should easily acheive what he's looking to do.

If you use the PopUp at all you will light the background and lower the contrast which will loose the smoke. Remote (Lead or RF ) trigger. speedlight/strobe with barn doors (stops light bleeding off to light the background or create lens flare) to the left or right of the shot 90 degrees. Read the posts, it's all in there.

 

[Stradawhovious]

If you use the PopUp at all you will light the background and lower the contrast which will loose the smoke. Remote (Lead or RF ) trigger. speedlight/strobe with barn doors (stops light bleeding off to light the background or create lens flare) to the left or right of the shot 90 degrees. Read the posts, it's all in there.

Not necessarily true.

In commander mode the popup flash can be set to -/- which will use the flash to send a command to the slave unit, but will not fire when the shutter is open. If the OP does this the popup will command the SB-800 as a slave, but will not influence the image. In the extremely unlikely event that the popup does influence the image (I never had an issue with it using the CLS mode) you can always flag it as well.

 

[DiskoJoe]

So what's the trick to photographing smoke?

Mirrors

 

[Stradawhovious]

So what's the trick to photographing smoke?

Mirrors

Eloborate please............

Or was that a reaching attempt at a "smoke and mirrors" reference....... ???