The next time you watch a movie keep a look out for smoke effects - you’ll be surprised how much ‘added’ smoke there is in movies whether its in a dark room with torches to trace the beam or a forest searching for dinosaurs, there is smoke in various densities to create the mood. I’ve been having a lot of fun with my insect fogger filled with glycerine, it produces some really nice smoke which adds to the mood of many scenes. This weekend I also broke out the smoke bombs that were available for purchase for just 4 days of the year in New Zealand and we had a blast, especially when one of the smoke bombs decided to explode while Shane was carrying it in a metal/glass lantern - he never even noticed. I had removed the glass from the side facing away from their bodies and placed it in a tin can to aim it outwards - but the flames didn’t seem to know that. The purple smoke bombs always seem to be the most impressive, and last the shortest amount of time - around 30 seconds on average, while the others all went for around a minute. Must be something about that purple colouring?.
We had scoped out a park on the other side of town but on the way home the day before, stopped in at a park much closer to home and it had a nice sheltered walkway, which is perfect for using smoke effects as it shielded us from the wind and the smoke lingered for a while rather than being blown away by the wind.
To start with I just used the insect fogger to create a ‘fog in the forest’ and got them to walk toward the camera. There’s an interesting variety of pictures as they walk in the fog then step out of it. The pictures I liked most were when they were in front of the smoke and looked nice and clear and sharp while the background was just a haze - like something from a story-book.
With smoke bombs it is always wise to have a reasonable amount of space to move around especially when the smoke starts to engulf the models - they need to be able to step forward and keep just ahead of the smoke otherwise it ends with a lot of blinking and runny eyes.
With regard to lighting I have found that smoke bombs look a lot better with flash. Here is a comparison between two photos with and without flash. The pictures will automatically change every 3 seconds - the colour is really bland without flash.
It’s always good to have a few props around when you have someone willing to set aside some time to model for you so of course the swords come out as well. Everyone who handles these two ‘props’ starts automatically getting into the mood which means less directing and more taking pictures.
4K video is a new interest of mine particularly the ability to extract 8 megapixel stills from a video - which is really useful with dynamic subjects like smoke and flames. To illustrate have a look at the explosion that wasn’t captured in photos and took up about 4 frames of 24 fps.
“The dance” shows how my assistant was jumping in and out of the bushes while holding the light as the subjects moved.
One way to hold two cameras is with a hotshoe tripod mount, that way one camera can record a wide video of the scene while the other is zoomed in and getting 4K decent quality footage.
These are the highlights of the shoot in 4K
Plus a few more photos from the day. Don’t be afraid to zoom in close once the smoke is no longer looking that good - capture some expressions “in the mist” when it loses all shape.
Also see “Smoke bomb photography”