Mike, I used to have one of the rooms in the house as my office (I work from home, I have a home based office) but wife decided to turn that into the children's bedroom when my second son was born so I was pushed into the box room. Too tiny for my equipment and paperwork, so the shed was the deal I had for a bonus.

Hefty
This is a heck of a review, what a great read, enjoyed it thoroughly.
This was definitely enlightening. Keep feeding us with more like this

Mike, This image looks ok to me. Its too small anyway to detect what might be going wrong. Can you upload a bigger version? From what I notice the background does look black to me, unless I am missing something.

I even shoot my smoke with full flourescent lights on in my shed, all 4 of them and at quite a very bright ambient, and yet my background come out almost 000 black. Mattmatic explained this to me that once my settings are for underexposure in relation to the ambient light then only what I light with the flash will appear in the image.

I then just use the brush to darken the bits and pieces that remain with smoke and then tweak it with curve in PP. But you can only do this if your BG is really close to dark.

I remember once I shot a series of them but allowed the flalsh light to come into the sensor from a narrow angle and it ruined the whole batch.

Mike, you need to use a black background. I just use the back of an office leather chair I have, turn it around and the high back just covers enough. I keep at about 50 cm from the smoke and it should be ok. You can use also any black cloth or something that doesn't have a reflective material. Also bring the flash very close to the smoke. I think that must be one of the reasons why your background is getting light. I keep my flash at less than a foot distance from the smoke. You need to concentrate that light straight into the subject and avoid it getting into the background, which was your first problem before when using built in flash, remember?

And also put the reflector very very close to the smoke, about a foot or so away. YSo you have a nice concentrated light.

And what settings are you using?

Amin

Mike, you got to provide light from the sides. Either flash from the side and reflector on the opposite side so you confine the light to a very narrow area. Thats how I did my first few ones and they didnt come out bad in fact. If you check some of my other smoke images in the flickr account you will even notice which ones have light only from one side and just reflector from the opposite side.
Last few ones I have managed to get hold of a second flash quite cheap and thanks to Mattmatic's and other member's help (check one of the threads I started where I needed help with flash lighting) I now use two flashgus. They work superbly and now I am starting to put some more ideas into place, like shaping them up.
Got a few more to process, they came out pretty nice, just need a bit tidying up in PP

Or if someone prefers a roll instead of circle

Anyone wants a circle puff?
By the way, this is not cigarette smoke, its incense smoke. And before anyone comes with jokes and tries to take the mickey out of me.... Nope, I did not puff the incense smoke and puff the circle . Used different ways to shape the circle.

Dont want to bore you with details but if anyone wants to have a go just ask and then I will bluber. I know this is not everyone's cup of tea, .

Shim

that looks very good, the head and the control sticks just look perfect but my oh my, that is serious money.
I am seriously considering what Mike recommended. I was just evaluating the weight of the redsnapper compared to Manfrotto but I think there isn't a lot of difference although the redsnapper is aluminium made

Oh by the way, at least you guys could have used a different name rather than Adèle, that would have made it more believable

I think you all need to puff some smoke, .

Bob just sent me a couple of bags with good smoke, the high quality one Why dont you all take a puff each and get somebody else to take the mickey out him or her and be cool .

Tel, it had to be you, it had your teltel signs written all over the PM .