The effect of axial shear on the soot formation characteristics of a methane-based laminar jet diffusion flame is investigated experimentally in the present work. The experiment is carried out by ensuring the methane jet has an outlet Reynolds number (Re), based on the burner diameter to be less than the critical Re and the shear is introduced by means of twin coaxial mounted jets at various air-jet velocities. It is observed that the introduction of shear reduces the soot formation across all the experimented fuel flow rates and also enhances the flame to soot area, extracted by means of time-averaged image processing. The flame to soot area is seen to drastically increase as the shear is increased, with the proportion increasing significantly at higher fuel flow rates. This reduction in soot area is on account of convective-soot nucleation time scale mismatch and the nature of combustion changing from pure diffusion controlled to partially premixed combustion. This is qualitatively observed as growth in the flame area or drop in soot area predominantly along the shear layers. It is also noted that as the fuel flow rates are increased, the flame to soot area saturates at lower magnitudes of velocity deficit, and the slopes of flame to soot area is steeper at higher magnitudes of velocity deficit, implying the presence of non-linear processes in determining the nature of the system. © 2018, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Inc, AIAA. All rights reserved.