Steam Photography

[Caitlin Compton]

Hey!
A friend of mine is hosting a small photo competition and the subject is water. They said that they would be looking for creativity. So I thought I could take a picture of steam coming out of a mug for something different! The only problem is is that the last time I tried taking a picture of steam it didn’t work so well. 🙂 But I thought I would try again, as I’ve seen some really cool pictures of steam. I was wondering if you could talk a bit about it how to take a good picture of it on Saturday, or if anyone else has any tips? I’ve attached a picture of my first go at it below! Thanks!

• This topic was modified 54 years, 9 months ago by .

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[James Staddon]

Wow, great question! To tell you the truth I’ve never tried this before. I’ve tried photographing smoke before, but I’d like to do some experimenting with steam.

So far, my initial guess would be to set up strong back lighting but frame the shot so the steam was against a very dark background, but I’ll have to see if that is actually the right way to do it. Will certainly consider this on Saturday!

[Caitlin Compton]

🙂 Great! Looking forward to it!

[James Staddon]

Ok, @creative-click-photography, you can watch the results of my initial experimentations on photographing steam via Saturday’s webinar. (Planning on putting together a more concise training video about it before too long.)
 
https://www.lenspiration.com/video/webinar051317/

[Ezra Morley]

@jamesstaddon, if I was going to shoot for steam, I would definitely recommend using a speedlight instead of continuous lighting, for a couple of reasons:

• It can be more concentrated, you won’t get all the light bleeding onto your black background.
• The duration is so short, that you don’t have to worry about your shutter speed. (Use a narrower aperture to get it more in focus.

I thought I had another reason, but I can’t remember it now. 🙂 I accidentally got a picture that way at an event I was shooting recently (this is a 100% crop):

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[Caitlin Compton]

Hi! I tried it out using the tips you gave me! 😀 I decided that using an essential oil diffuser was a great idea since there is steam coming out of it all the time. I’ve attached the best picture I got below. What do you think?

Once I had gotten all the lighting correct etc. I set up a coffee cup and tried it with boiling water, but for some reason it just wouldn’t work. The steam wouldn’t show up! 🙁 It was worse than the last picture I posted. So I can’t work out why that’s the case! The only thing I can think of was that there wasn’t as much steam coming from the cup as from the diffuser, but still I would have thought it would have shown up since it worked quite well for the diffuser.

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[David Frazer]

A quick suggestion:
Steam is white when in the presence of a strong light. The darker you make the background, the more it will show up.

[James Staddon]

Hey, here’s an idea! I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of this earlier…. bring the cup of tea into a cold environment! The colder the air temperature, the more steam will be visible.

[Caitlin Compton]

Thanks @dfrazer and @jamesstaddon! Yes, you’re right – when I try again I’ll try to make the background darker!

Great idea, James! It won’t be too hard to find a cold place as it’s winter here! 🙂

[Nathanael & Samantha Frazer]

I know this is old, but hey, better late than never. As a couple folks mentioned, a darker background helps. James also had it right, putting the light pointing towards the camera through the steam. However, the key you’re looking for is directionality of the light. This means two things: the light is coming straight from the source and not splashing onto anything other than the steam, and the light source itself is not too large, washing itself out by shining from different angles. One can acheive that by using a gridded light, or just improvise one like that what I did here in 5 minutes. You could do this to a study lamp, or any other light source for that matter.
In this setup, the light source is just outside the frame to the right. sorry, it’s not a great, pretty picture as it was for illustration purposes only 😉

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[Caitlin Compton]

Wow! I can’t believe you got a picture of steam that good in 5 minutes @nasa. I spent a very long time and didn’t come away with anything to be proud of! 🙂

What’s a gridded light? 🙂 So is that your light in the first picture with some paper around it to control it from spilling everywhere? So you didn’t have it at the back, but coming from the side? Or can’t I see properly! 🙂

Hmm. . . yes that’s the problem I had of trying not to let the light spill on to everything. The thing I just couldn’t get right is if the study lamp is behind the cup then it is in the picture, I just couldn’t work out how to set that part up and not have the lamp in the picture, but still have back-lighting. My light was probably a bit big too!

[Nathanael & Samantha Frazer]

whoops! my first image was somewhat unhelpful. That was to show the way I modified the speedlight, not to show the lighting setup. The setup was: the camera, mug and flash in a straight line, flash pointing towards the camera through the steam. Then, looking through the viewfinder, I moved the flash to my right until I no longer saw it in the image, (turning it at the same time to keep the light on the steam)
Sorry, I meant that in 5 minutes I assembled the little paper thingy on my flash- the whole thing took longer than that. Yes, you’re right! The goal of the paper is to prevent light from spilling where I don’t want it to. The little folded up pieces inside is to ensure the light striking the steam is all at the same angle.
A gridded light is any light source used with a grid such as this: https://www.adorama.com/pp900849.html (never mind the price, Profoto stuff is like that. it just happened to be the first item I found on Adorama with an image that showed the grid well) They (grids) are mainly used on beauty dishes and hard light reflectors, but occasionally also on softboxes. Their purpose is to ensure that all the light rays from a given light source are travelling parallel to each other, or to put it another way, all in the same direction- regardless of the size of the light source. For example in the case of a large softbox, the light coming from one corner is hitting the subject at an angle very different to the light coming from the opposite corner to the same point on the subject. This gives a softer look to the subject, at the expense of defined edges. A grid will cause the light to be less scattered thus giving more definition, but maintaining the size of the light source, and thus preserving softness.
You could probably do something similar to what I did, but with your desk lamp and some black construction paper!

[James Staddon]

Sweet, I didn’t know that!

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