Photographing cigarette smoke

Ok so I have this idea for a composition that involves a pair of chuck taylors, an makeshift ashtray with lit cigarette and some other stuff. Obviously it is a still life and I was thinking b&w low key, you know that moody look, so it's not a pic of someone smoking. But I need advice on shooting cig smoke, do you try and hit the smoke dead on, or side? I am sure you want a faster shutter speed then what I would normally do the shoot with (1/60) as I would have to freeze the smoke, maybe 1/125 is fast enough while still allowing me to shoot at lower lighting power? I just wanted to see if anyone here has some experience shooting cigarette smoke, and what were your results? I know recently their was this one photographer who shot smoke, but it was for a series and he took like 8,000 shots and only had 30 keepers. I'm not looking for that much insanity, just needs to get the idea of the composition for a portfolio I want to start of the seedier side of life.

I'll have to dig through my notes to find settings, but I never did find any results that I was 100% happy with. The lighting is tricky.

One suggestion I will offer is to avoid cigarettes and go with incense sticks instead. They smell a lot better.

There are free smoke brushes for Photoshop so you could "cheat" and add the smoke in post. Saves a lot of effort and I bet you could not tell the difference.

I found with incenses smoke that shooting from the front and flash thru the smoke from the side helps (but I had a dark background so with a light background this may not work)

You absolutely need a black background to do nice smoke pictures. The smoke will disappear whenever it's in front of a white object.

Here's an example of what I mean:

Frame and shoot your shot without the smoke. If you want to do your own smoke shots, shoot it with flash or light against a black background. Then put the smoke layer above the shot layer in photoshop and use the Lighten blend mode to bring the smoke in. Easy, peasy.

That's cheating,
Marcel's pic has a lot going on , and demonstrates what I think you'd tend to lose fabricating smoke shots.

Ya I really don't want to photoshop the shot, if at possible I just want to make adjustments in Lightroom. I have a friend coming over Friday to model for me and I was thinking of getting some shots of her smoking as well.

Stoshowicz said:

That's cheating,
Marcel's pic has a lot going on , and demonstrates what I think you'd tend to lose fabricating smoke shots.

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I never said anything about Marcel's shot. And "cheating"?! C'mon!! I'll let you call it that if you download the smoke from the net somewhere, but if you shoot your own and composite I'd argue that it's no more a "cheat" than a panorama or HDR shot. That said, there's nothing wrong with trying to get it all at once, but it is truly a tough thing to capture while getting everything else, so expect to burn through lots of cigarettes.

If you want to do it, and you have a friend coming over, practice beforehand. Get the cigarette smoking and figure out what you want/need to shoot against and what direction the light needs to come from (and how strong it needs to be) to capture what you want. The problem with doing it in LR/PS afterward is that it's virtually impossible to mask in a way that doesn't bring out everything behind it as well. Contrast adjustments and light blending modes in Photoshop will be your friend.

BackdoorHippie said:

I never said anything about Marcel's shot. And "cheating"?! C'mon!! I'll let you call it that if you download the smoke from the net somewhere, but if you shoot your own and composite I'd argue that it's no more a "cheat" than a panorama or HDR shot. That said, there's nothing wrong with trying to get it all at once, but it is truly a tough thing to capture while getting everything else, so expect to burn through lots of cigarettes.

If you want to do it, and you have a friend coming over, practice beforehand. Get the cigarette smoking and figure out what you want/need to shoot against and what direction the light needs to come from (and how strong it needs to be) to capture what you want. The problem with doing it in LR/PS afterward is that it's virtually impossible to mask in a way that doesn't bring out everything behind it as well. Contrast adjustments and light blending modes in Photoshop will be your friend.

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I'm just joking friend, whatever you want to do to get the image as you want it is fine. I'm just saying that you might lose out on umm novelty or spontaneity. Some folks are purist , and they want to literally catch a moment , others want to 'create' the image. I don't think Marcel's image would be one done by design, and I find it more interesting for that reason , but that being said,fabricating an image , that is , to say-set up an image or add things etc does often make for a unified presentation.
PS ( I never said you said anything about Marcel's shot )

I was curious about this one so I did some thinking and then did a rough try-out.



No flash used and a too slow shutter to really freeze the smoke but that implies there's plenty of room for improvement.

I did the set-up using a white background to find a correct exposure, then simply used that setting with a black background. Light from below makes all smoke clearly visible.
Then in post some shine-job and that's that.

The other light-source was my very "expensive" kitchen bulb right above this scene.

Could not resist doing it the "cheating" way -
Take shot with cameras own flash no smoke visible, then added smoke with single stroke of a brush in PS job done.

An another since it was fun to toy with in post.

I'm not above creating an image, as I am a full time painter first, but although I really like the test shots, I don't like the one done in photoshop. I know it can be fixed but you can just tell it's fake especially the shape of the smoke. Anyways the biggest problem I see myself having and forgive me if I did not mention this, is that I want it to be B&W. I am afraid the smoke just won't have enough contrast and while visible on color shot. It might vanish during the conversion. I know, I know I just need to get out there and start experimenting on my own, thanks guys for the info.

crewchief227 said:

I'm not above creating an image, as I am a full time painter first, but although I really like the test shots, I don't like the one done in photoshop. I know it can be fixed but you can just tell it's fake especially the shape of the smoke. Anyways the biggest problem I see myself having and forgive me if I did not mention this, is that I want it to be B&W. I am afraid the smoke just won't have enough contrast and while visible on color shot. It might vanish during the conversion. I know, I know I just need to get out there and start experimenting on my own, thanks guys for the info.

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If you light source below is strong enough, your smoke will stand out. I shot mine at ISO 100 without flash so there's plenty of room to get that smoke. A spotlight would be best. Anyone familiar with dark pubs knows how well the smoke is lit there. The only difficulty is having the light hit your smoke without hitting the lens or rest of the scene.

I used a LED at some 300 Lumen.

I switched to B&W and the smoke disappears a degree but you can push it up in post. It depends on the rest of the scene how easy that'll be.