Exposure considerations
Neon signs are bright; that is part of their charm
and part of their usefulness. The brightness also
makes it more difficult to shoot the sign than it
would seem. You do have choices: You can expose
for the whole scene, which will most likely over-
expose the neon; you can expose for the sign,
which can underexpose the rest of the scene; or
you can combine different exposures into a single
frame to get the exposure right for both the scene
and the neon sign. The aperture that you use will
also affect the way the light bleeds on a neon
sign. This bleeding of the light is called halation
and it relates to how the light can spread beyond
the proper boundaries in a photographic image.
As you change the aperture, the spread of the
light changes; there are no right or wrong aper-
tures, and knowing this means you can change
the look of the light and the image by using dif-
ferent apertures.
To get the neon sign to stand out against the
background, just follow these steps to under-
expose the image slightly. The first step is to find
a sign that is relatively isolated so that the com-
position will allow the sign to stand by itself.ABOUT THIS PHOTO My local sushi restaurant, making sure that people know what they serve and that they are open. Taken at 1/160 sec-
ond, f/2.8, and ISO 400.
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