In this work, we investigate the utility of the smoke lamp for evaluating the soot-reducing potential of additives, by comparing it to a more complex liquid-fed laminar diffusion flame. The additives, ferrocene (bis(cyclopentadienyl) iron-Fe(C5H5)2), ruthenocene (bis(cyclopentadienyl)ruthenium-Ru(C5H5)2), iron naphthenate (a 12% iron salt of naphthenic acid, which is a mixture of fatty carboxylic acids, some of which may include a cyclopentane ring), and MMT (Methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl-CH3C5H4Mn(CO)3) are evaluated at various concentrations in the jet fuel JP-8. Although the smoke lamp is a simple, inexpensive, and widely-available test for evaluating the sooting potential of liquid fuels, it does not provide an effective measure of soot suppression by metal-containing additives. The drop-tube reactor more accurately captures the physical conditions and processes—droplet vaporization, ignition, and rich vs. lean operation—typically found in more complex systems. We find in the smoke lamp that ferrocene, and to a lesser degree ruthenocene, are effective soot suppressors when used in JP-8, and that their effectiveness increases with increasing concentration. In the smoke lamp, MMT and iron naphthenate have minimal effect. On the other hand, in the drop-tube reactor, all four additives are quite effective, especially at fuel lean conditions, where soot suppression reaches 90–95%. Under fuel-rich conditions, where in some cases the additives elevate the yield of soot aerosol slightly, we find a significant increase in the production of the soluble organic fraction of the aerosol, i.e., tar. In order to understand why the smoke lamp sometimes fails to indicate a soot suppressing potential (i.e., from MMT and iron naphthenate), soot samples were collected from a wick lamp burning ferrocene and iron naphthenate additives in JP-8. These samples, as well as several from the drop-tube reactor, were analyzed by X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) in order to determine their metal content, and we find that the soot aerosol produced by the wick lamp using ferrocene-containing fuel had roughly 30 times the iron content of the soot aerosol produced by the wick lamp using iron-naphthenate-containing fuel. This difference in metal content is not found in samples produced in the drop-tube reactor. We conclude that the poor performance of iron naphthenate in the smoke lamp is likely the result poor vaporization of the additive from the wick, a consequence of its high molecular weight (average 465).