Thank you! Nope, the wide angle lens just lets me get the whole of both signs in the shot from fairly close. The focal length of the lens affects field of view and perspective. I’m standing almost beneath the sign on the left. The part on the right with the diving girl is about 20 feet away and much taller. A wider lens (lower mm) allows me to get everything I want in the shot. The rest is about my exposure settings. The diving girl is a sequenced light. There are 3 neon diving girls that light up one after the other, so it looks like she’s diving off the top of the sign. If my shutter speed is too slow, all 3 would be lit, and you couldn’t see the nice color because it’d be overexposed and blown out. If my aperture were wide open, the part on the right side of this image would be blurry and out of focus because it’s far away. So, to compensate for those things, I used a faster shutter speed and tighter aperture to expose my shot for the neon. That means everything else falls off to black. Because the street lights and whatnot are much dimmer than the neon sign. It’s like I was saying in the other thread, exposure and light matters wayyyyy more than the specifics of the lens. The lens I was using is the cheapie that came with my camera. With photography, it’s ALWAYS about the light more than anything else.
Wow this is great! Does having such a low mm lens help to intensity the blackness and make the neon pop or is that more lighting?
Thank you! Nope, the wide angle lens just lets me get the whole of both signs in the shot from fairly close. The focal length of the lens affects field of view and perspective. I’m standing almost beneath the sign on the left. The part on the right with the diving girl is about 20 feet away and much taller. A wider lens (lower mm) allows me to get everything I want in the shot. The rest is about my exposure settings. The diving girl is a sequenced light. There are 3 neon diving girls that light up one after the other, so it looks like she’s diving off the top of the sign. If my shutter speed is too slow, all 3 would be lit, and you couldn’t see the nice color because it’d be overexposed and blown out. If my aperture were wide open, the part on the right side of this image would be blurry and out of focus because it’s far away. So, to compensate for those things, I used a faster shutter speed and tighter aperture to expose my shot for the neon. That means everything else falls off to black. Because the street lights and whatnot are much dimmer than the neon sign. It’s like I was saying in the other thread, exposure and light matters wayyyyy more than the specifics of the lens. The lens I was using is the cheapie that came with my camera. With photography, it’s ALWAYS about the light more than anything else.