271/365 - Where There's Smoke

djwtwo has added a photo to the pool:

…there's a photographer with off-camera flash trying to take a picture of it?

I've been pondering shooting smoke for a bit now, and decided today was the day. Bought some incense, cleared out a bay in the garage, set up a table, a dark backdrop, and some strobes, and got to work. Took about 60 exposures, this was the one I liked best.

Focusing was the biggest challenge; I dialed in exposure pretty quickly. Ended up going for a narrow aperture to get a bit more leeway: I marked off on my table where the in-focus region began and ended, and tried to shoot when the plume was in the marked area (it rarely was entirely within the marked space.)

Like my attempts at water droplet photography, a lot of fun, but also a bit of spray-and-pray with the random motion of the smoke. All that said, though, I'm pretty happy with this as a first attempt.

Nikon D7000 w/Nikkor 18-200mm @ 50mm, 1/250s @ ƒ/16, ISO400. Two SB-700s at full power, 50mm zoom, one on either side of the screen, with black construction paper used as gobos to keep the light on the smoke (and not on the backdrop or flaring in the lens.) Cropped and adjusted in Aperture (to make the background as black as possible, and to tweak the white balance to lend some color to the smoke.)