Smoke Ninja - Handheld Smoke Machine

As with a lot of things I see on the tables at the PhotoLive exhibitions that Camera Electronic holds, the Smoke Ninja accessory attracted the eye - but was quickly bypassed for lack of time.

Thank goodness for the internet  - the people who make this product, and a larger version have filled in the questions with a pretty comprehensive video website. We get to see this small generator pouring vapour out to simulate steam, smoke, and fog.

It is advertised as safe for the actors and the crew and apparently quite controllable. I am drawn to this last word as it runs entirely contrary to my own experiences with on-set smoke and vapour using other methods.

Old-school to the end, without having attended the old school, I first tried it with pyrotechnics: smoke bombs purchased in South Australia. Looking like little cherry bombs, they fired off a vile plume of smoke for about 20 seconds and then quit flat. If you did not get the spectacular shot in that time it was air out the studio for half an hour and try again. The material deposited itself on every surface - probably including the front elements of the lenses.

Then there was the dry ice day. A big esky of the stuff brought in and kept in the freezer. a bit of water in a vase, a chunk of it dropped in and there was a minute of swirling graveyard mist - that dropped straight to the floor and stayed there. Hardly the fog that was needed. but at least it did not stay or stink. And the dry ice disappeared once you put it out in the sun.

Frankly, if you are going to obscure the scene, the Smoke Ninja looks to be the best bet. It might even be the go for tabletop model dioramas that need a smoking chimney stack - the hobby shop smoke generators are all pretty ineffective.

 Note: for those of us with old eyes, we do not need swirling  atmospheric effects. Cataracts make everything look like dawn in Victorian London. We get most of our surprises by discovering who it is we are actually talking to…  

For more info about this product, please click here

Text by Richard Stein