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I spent the day with a friend trying our hand at capturing smoke trails, finally settling on the combination of off camera flash (thanks Phottix Duo Cable + SB-400, my friend has a D60 so CLS was not really going to be useful for him) and a candle+match.

Here are my feeble attempts, There are certainly some cropping options (please suggest), so any comments and critique are greatly welcomed (as well as tips).

I think for most it is a matter of framing on these Cameron. The last is better for this I think. eventhough it is centred.
Have you added the colour in post?
This has got to be hard to do with the smoke movement and holding a flash etc etc.....

colin_12 wrote:Have you added the colour in post?
This has got to be hard to do with the smoke movement and holding a flash etc etc.....

The colours have been added in post, there is no other easy way when you do this at the spur of a moment.

We ended up using manual focus with a very small aperture to give us the depth of field, then hoping that the smoke moved in the right direction.

Dude these are certainly hightech with your high speed sync!! I wouldn't have thought of doing that.

I quite like the formation and composition in #2 but with the colour scheme of #1.

#3 in portrait format would also be an improvement.

aim54x wrote:no other easy way

Apart from gelling the flash

aim54x wrote:manual focus

The 51 points weren't enough to lock on to these babies?? kidding

The third and fourth images are very tidy indeed.

#3 woould have benefited from a portrait orientation to get a bit more in, however easy to say in hindsight..nontheless the sharpess and brillant red makes up for it top effort on that one...

Its a shame the left hand side is alittle chopped off in #1, it would make a nice screen saver!

good to see you trying different techs cam, you have done well for a first time round here imo.

These really are excellent for your first attempt and I look forward to seeing the progression from this point

They are very good. I believe you would be bettero off
using incense sticks instead of a candle? This is one of
my attempts...

Thanks guys, I will def give it another go...incense I should have known!