Nine minutes of smoke
One evening at Erik's cabin, a 100mm macro, an SB-800, and the settings that turned soft blur into crisp smoke.
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All of these came out of about nine minutes on September 5, 2010, at Erik’s cabin. The camera was a Nikon D700 with a Tokina 100mm f/2.8 macro, and an SB-800 lit the smoke from the side.
The Lightroom catalog kept the settings for every frame, so the evening can be replayed:
| Time | Aperture | Shutter | ISO | What changed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6:26 | f/3.2 | 1/1000 | 1000 | First attempts: smoke frozen, background soft but visible |
| 6:28 | f/3.2 | 1/4000–1/8000 | 1000 | Faster shutter with high-speed sync (Auto FP) to cut ambient light |
| 6:30 | f/8 | 1/4000 | 1000 | Stopped down: ambient light falls away, only the flash-lit smoke remains |
| 6:35 | f/11 | 1/4000 | 1000 | One last frame |
The D700 normally syncs flash at 1/250s. Going faster meant using the SB-800’s Auto FP mode, which pulses the flash through the whole exposure. That costs flash power, and one frame (DSC_2995) caught the flash still recharging. The rest is the trade every flash shooter learns: shutter speed and aperture control the ambient light, and the flash controls the subject. Stopping down to f/8 took away enough ambient light that the background went black.
Edits were minimal: a small shadows adjustment, and no exposure change except one +0.8 stop on DSC_3008.
