Smoke Image

It has been quite a long time i didn't play with smoke image since the first try early this year. I remember that time i didn't know how to use my SB-800 speedlight to lighten the smoke, but i used a small light source,i.e. a small torch light for the lighting purpose.
Haha, i was stupid enough to use the autofocus to capture the smoke. And the settings were just weird.It ended up that i almost wanted to delete them all, but luckily finally i flipped and alligned them with care, creating a serie of interesting smoke images!

This time, i used my newly bought 16-85mm VR for this attempt, setting my aperture to considerably smaller, at f/8, and then the shutter speed of flash sync, 1/250s, my iso to the lowest 200, the white balance to daylight, and then the SB-800 to the power of 1/16th ,and finally, triggering my SB-800 with the built in flash as the master commander.

The difficulty was still there for the focus, but nowadays i started to realise that i should have used the continuous focusing mode for moving subjects!!!Another thing is, i used manual focusing.
I remember the October issue of " Practical Photography" magazine does show us the way to shoot smoke images, so i grabbed my magazine and flipped over it for 5 minutes and then i started to take this serie.
Well, they are much more better than my previous attemp, though they might not be real good this time, but i am contented with the result so far.
The improvement include the lower noise, more obvious smoke shape, better composition, better application of photoshop, especially the rainbow colors for the very first time:), the focusing and so on...
Passion and the patience were so important, until i had been bitten by those annoying mosquitoes but i still continue shooting!!!
Here are some more from the serie:



The Magic Dog





Fly Me To The Moon





Showing You Something





Simply Red





A Sleeping Woman





The Man In Half Face


I like them all, and i will definately play with it in the future!