Coloured smoke bombs can add some interesting effects to a photoshoot. I personally prefer natural looking white smoke and use an insect fogger with glycerine to achieve the effects I want - it can look like smoke or mist. Or it can look like a car is doing a burnout.. Sometimes though coloured smoke bombs can be cool and many wedding photographers like to add them to a shoot occasionally. In New Zealand fireworks are only available 4 days of the year so if you want to stock up on coloured smoke bombs you have to choose wisely which ones to buy. The choice at the moment appears to be between the “Boom Brothers M18” 4 pack and the “Shogun Mammoth Smoke” 4 pack which actually includes one white smoke bomb.
I lit them side by side one at a time - the basic conclusion is that if you want 1 minute per smoke bomb “guaranteed” the Boom Brothers M18 pack is the one to get. If you are prepared to “take what you get” regarding timing, anywhere from 30 seconds to just over a minute - with the chance of more impressive smoke, the Shogun Mammoth Smoke bombs are the ones to get. There is no definite winner, it’s a case of “6 of one or half a dozen of the other.” The last video at the bottom is of the brand simply named “Smoke” that come in a pack of 5.
I also tried a pack of the “Giant” smoke balls which are much smaller and get too hot to handle so not good for people photos.
This 5 pack simply had “Smoke” as the name.