How to Photo and Edit Smoke Trails

What to do on a rainy day! or like me what to do when you are sunburnt and have to stay inside!

Well here is my idea, play with smoke! and make some interesting photos.

Equipment needed:
1 camera
1 lens
1 black background
1 candle
1 burning stick
1 off camera flash
and free photo editing software called Gimp

In my case the Camera was the Nikon d700, the lens the nikon 50mm f1.4Settings:
Aperture set to f/13 or around about.
shutter set to max sync speed (1/250th)
iso: at its lowest

Flash on camera set to Commander mode so as not to fire light onto the black background
Black background was a black piece of cloth over my tv held there by my shoes.
The off camera flash was set on the floor infront of the camera just below the FOV. Pointed directly up the way (zoomed in a little so as not to disperse light onto the background or cause camera flare/glare

A candle was used as my constant heat source to re light the burning stick after I shake it so that it is just smoking.

Place the smoking stick just above the flash, and still out of view of the camera, let the smoke rise (best not have a windy/drafty room to do this in) and then fire off the flash.

Do this a number of times, some times the smoke will be too thick or too little or it may have blown out of the FOV so take about 20-40 photos on the first go.

Slow mo: Imovie vs Screenflow

As you can see from my youtube channels I have made over 500 videos for youtube.

When I was working on my PC laptop I would use Windows movie maker which was great for doing stuff like the timelapse video where I had a lot of photos to put to some music (like this)
However one of the big bummers about WMM is that once I got my Canon 550D camera the video files were not accepted and I had to go through a long and timely process of changing the file format and also making them small enough to edit on my PC  (see this video here)
Then when I upgraded to my Imac it came along with Imovie which I thought is very good and although I was lost for a day or two I figured it out fairly quickly and was able to make videos with it equally as quickly.

Then I got Screenflow (you can get it online for around 100 dolla) and have found that its ability with the editing the fast 60fps footage from the canon I can slow it down to 20% of original speed (making it a 300fps relatively) It adds a very nice smoothing between frames and it looks super smooth compared to what Imovie was pumping out as you can see in the videos below.

The quality from the video file as well from screenflow just seems a lot cleaner, Imovie imports and compresses the video it seems so the Screenflow wins again for quality of results





much more impressed by screenflows efforts for slow motion, even though it is not a software for this kind of stuff it totally beats imovie




so not impressed by Imovie's attempt at slow motion especially compared to how well Screenflow does at the same settings and same video, check the other related video








Results


Slow mo 
Imovie: 2/5
Screenflow 4/5


Render quality
Imovie 2/5
Screenflow 5/5


Ease of use
Imovie 4/5
Screenflow 5/5


Useless special effects(wastes space and are pointless)
Imovie 3/5
Screenflow 1/5


Cost
Imovie 5/5 (its free with an Imac)
Screenflow 3/5




Overall
Imovie 2/5
Screenflow 4/5

Lady Lucie Latex shoot

I may fill this up with more words but in the mean time I am just putting up some of the photos from the first shoot yesterday

WARNING WARNING!!! DONT WATCH IF YOU DONT WANT TO SEE sb900 SPEEDLIGHT F...

Photo Portfolio Critique Page 41-50

Things are a changing at Photo portfolio critique headquarters.


Due to the number of submissions, I am not able to put up the photos individually to the page to critique as it is using up too much memory space.  I am also going to stop naming the critiques and in the title put what I suspect is the most important piece of info regarding the whole critique.




Normal Rules for submitting your portfolio
1) no more than 5 of your best photos (no more than 1mb per photo)

2) All photos must have names (if the photo does not need a name please delete the file number)

3) Describe what the photo is.

4) Describe why you think it is good.

5) In your email you must state "I hereby give Dom Bower the rights to replicate my images in his youtube channels and his blog, I also appreciate if Dom is as harsh as he likes on my Images"

6) send them to dombower@hotmail.com
Please watch the mission statement before submitting any images

(at the moment there are 71 emails waiting to be opened, you may not be replied to for over a month.)

"I do not look at the images before i record, all reactions are genuine and truthful. Where I give harsh critique I try to support with advice and direction."




So first off

My new photography book. click below

 

Getting There ...

By Dom Bower

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Facebook

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Flickr account

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22767497@N05/

Twitter

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Website

http://www.dombower.com/

Browse other personalized gifts from Zazzle.

Do not look at the site or tshirts if you are under 18 years old

you have been warned

The link for UK photographers check out

http://www.zazzle.co.uk/sportinwaves

Point and destroy

For the US buyers click below

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wedding website

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Photobox gallery page

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Sigma 10-20mm DC HSM Lens Review

The Sigma 10-20mm lens is one of two that sigma make. There is the f/4-5.6 and the new version the f/3.5. (that means that the new version the aperture does not change as you zoom in from 10 to 20mm and you don't loose a whole stop of light (ie half the amount of light gets into the camera at f5.6 as it does at f/4)

This is a DC lens meaning that it is for Cropped sensor cameras ie anything below the level of the Nikon D700.

Its HSM focus motor means it is fast and very quiet.  (being such a small focal length and such a small aperture focus speed is going to be quick on almost all cameras)

It also gets a very close focusing distance but in no terms is this a macro.







more videos after the break




Here are a bunch of photos taken with the sigma lens on a trip in Japan  (along with some shots with the 105mm macro)



And here is one where I do a bit of time lapse and also shot at 3fps chasing Kim on a bike again in Japan


and here is somones shots with the newer version the f/3.5

here is some crazy wide angle video with the new version as well


and here is some sexy twitor effects

Nikon 18-200mm vr lens review

I didn't do enough reviews of this lens when I had it so I am borrowing some others peoples videos for your decision.

First thing to remember is that there are now two versions the vr1 and the vr2, the vr2 being the newer and more expensive and the vr1 now possibly only able to be bought second hand.

When first released this lens was one of the best and first MEGA Zoom lens and there was something like a 9 month waiting list before you could buy it.

Now remember this lens is for DX only body cameras so anything below the Nikon D700.
It has Vibration reduction and I have managed to get sharp shots (at 200mm) at 1/10th of a second.

However It did suffer from a thing called Lens Creep where if you were not holding it straight or upwards the lens would extend downwards (zooming). Which was annoying.

There was also a fair bit of distortion but you have to expect that from something that is giving you such a range of focal lengths to play with. This was still not fixed with the VR2 version though.

Its closest focusing distance was 50cm at all focal lengths. Now to be a 200mm lens at 50cm you would expect some amazing macro but this is not so as there is a large amount of lens breathing the closer you get to your subject.

In conclusion it is fair to say that this is a good lens that is very very versatile. Optically it is not excellent and never considered Professional but it is good.  I would consider it to be the best all in one Mega Zoom lens out there.



More videos after the break

Nikon D300 vs Nikon D700 vs Fuji S5pro ISO test

In this video I have looked at the noise you get form your Jpeg images you get out of 3 different cameras. I had all the cameras on a low noise reduction (in camera)




And now the noise tests in RAW!!!

Guess which camera and which iso!

Quick flash photography tips

My new photography book. click below

 

Getting There ...

By Dom Bower

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HDR Vs Flash for internal property photography

HDR

Slow shutter 20th

1/250th and flash

1/50th and flash (forgot to turn on ligh in background)

My new photography book. click below

 

Getting There ...

By Dom Bower

Book Preview