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How I made a tiny smoke machine from an electric cigarette

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The plan

I have used an electric cigarette as a small smoke machine. My first version was bit and pieces glued together but that wasn’t very robust and broke. No that I have a 3D printer I wanted to revisit this project and make it properly.

Smokers can suck smoke to their lungs and blow big clouds of smoke. I’m not a smoker myself so that will only end up in coughing. So I wanted to reverse the operation and directly blow air into the cigarette and get smoke out directly. This way I also get great precision where the smoke goes, much more than with traditional smoke machines.

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These tricks will up your control of smoke to ninja level

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I’ve used smoke machines on shoots indoors before, and they never end up looking quite the way I expect. Thanks to this video from Gavin Hoey, though, I think I now know why. Obviously, I was using the wrong kind of smoke. In the video, Gavin shows three different liquids that can be used to create smoke, when and why you might want to use one over another, as well as how to light them.

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Flood your scene with smoke using these DIY smoke bombs

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Fog and smoke can be a wonderfully creative tool for giving your photos and video footage some atmosphere. Both figuratively and literally. While it’s quite easy to do in the studio with a simple fog machine, it gets a little trickier out on location. There’s no place to plug in for power, and battery operated fog machines are expensive and often a little underwhelming outdoors.

That’s when you might have to just make your own. And in this video from the Deadlance Steamvlog, we find out how. It uses some pretty basic materials, just some stump remover and sugar. But the results are rather impressive.

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How to turn smoke into low lying fog for your next spooky photo shoot

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Low lying fog can be fantastic for those creepy photo shoots, especially out on location. Or, perhaps you’re trying to recreate the look of a particular 80s pop music TV show. Whatever your reason, low lying fog often works much better than a more elevated smoke-filled atmosphere choking your subject.

In this video from Jay P Morgan for The Slanted Lens, we see how to make a smoke machine produce low lying fog. And all you need is a cooler and a big block of ice.

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Make simple and cheap DIY smoke for photos and videos

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There are several ways of creating smoke for your photos and videos. Caleb Pike from DSLR Video Shooter will show you how to make an awesome smoke effect for your photos and videos. It’s not always easy to control the smoke, no matter the way you make it. But Caleb’s method makes the smoke easy to distribute and control. What’s more, it’s cheap and requires only two props: baby nose sucker and hand-held vaporizer. Sounds bizarre, but it works like a charm.

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These Incredible Fight Scenes Were Shot In Camera With Scale Models And Cigarette Smoke

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While a lot of our recent articles lately have gone into manipulating photos in Photoshop, some are still doing it the old fashion way, in camera.

The photo above, as well as the photos below, were taken in camera, using knowledge and ingenuity. We reached out to  Felix Alejandro Hernández Rodríguez to ask him how he made those:

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Using Smoke Bombs In Portraits For A Strong Effect

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Here is a technique I did not think I will ever be covering on the blog, using smoke bombs. In fact I did not even know that there is such a thing as smoke bombs until I stumbled on the photography of Jovana Rikalo.

Serbian photographer Jovana Rikalo uses smoke bombs to create some unexpected effects in her portraits. You see, some photographers like control in their photos, but Jovana prefers the random effect she gets from the way the smoke moves in the air.

I Asked Jovana about the hazards of using this technique and she says that she only shoots outside where the smoke quickly disperses.

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