Thanks for the endorsement
.
mpistone wrote in post #9851324
You could try shining a regular lamp on the smoke and flag it from reaching your background; with enough continuous light you don't need a flash, but using a pop up flash is going to be tough!
It's pretty tough all around - if you don't use a flash and instead use generic continuous lights, it's going to be very hard to control the spill. That, and you need a LOT of light.
Chief Ton Yan wrote in post #9852799
Well @ 9:00am (its now 8:40am) im taking a walk to my local store POUNDSTRETCHER, for some props in the form of a desk lamp, roll of foil and a black pillow case.....(Yeah i know what your probably thinking lol)
Post my results shortly
P.S And inscent sticks !
Chief
Saw you post in my thread earlier
. A couple more tips. If you can fashion a device with tinfoil to push the light away and around to the side of the smoke (think like a periscope) you might have better results than using continuous lights. The very first time i tried to photograph smoke was about a year and a half ago, when I only had my kit lens. I was shooting an incense stick in a room with a lamp to my side, and the black background was a LCD monitor which was turned off.
The only way I could get them to look anything like the ones I posted in my thread was to crank up the midtones and crush the blacks in PP. Because the overhead lighting was very dim I had to shoot at ISO 1600 and push it ~1 or 2 stops. The shots I got were extremely noisy.
So just a note of caution - with what you have, don't be expecting a lot. A basic, inexpensive flash goes a long way.