A trial with Table-top

I like doing table top photography. I recently purchased a Nikon D5300, with a 18-55 mm kit lens. I tried to photograph steam coming out of hot water in a cup. I could see the steam nicely with my naked eyes, but unfortunately my camera could not capture it. I tried different shutter speeds with different apertures and ISO’s. but failed miserably to capture the steam. I think I got it right exposure-wise, but didn’t get the desired result.

I have attached herewith, two images for your reference. My light source was a 10 W Philips bulb (bright enough, couldn’t stare at it with naked eyes), with a ‘thermocol’ reflector on the opposite side.

Dhananjay Ingle, Nagpur

I am glad you tried to experiment, though I must say, you got it all wrong.

a) Both the images you sent us (which I have not reproduced here) are totally underexposed (almost black).

b) A 10 watt bulb is often used in night-lamps, and is not bright enough to prevent you staring at it, unless of course the bulb was 100w and you erroneously mentioned 10w.

Please refer to the sketch shown here. For steam to be photographed successfully, you must:

1) Have a very dark background, preferably black.

2) There should be sufficient distance between the cup and the background to prevent any light spill on the background.

3) The cup should be backlit/45-degree side-back-lit as shown here, preferably using continuous-source light.

4) Reflectors may be placed to reflect some light back to the cup. It would be nice if the reflectors are made of cardboard/thin ply-wood (white on the reflecting side), which would also act as ‘cutters’ to prevent any stray light hitting the front surface of the lens.

5) Take shots at various shutter speeds for different effects/steam shapes. You may find medium shutter speeds (like 1/125) to give you better-looking images, but experiment.

Instead of a hot cup of water, try the shot using tea or coffee and angle the camera so that you can also see the content of the cup.

Do send us an image or two after you re-do the shot. Best of luck.