What are the best tips for shooting neon lights on film?

Use fast film

Faster film stocks such as those with ISO 400, ISO 800 and ISO 1600 are more sensitive to light, and hence should give you more flexibility and help you capture photos in challenging lighting situations.

Adjust your camera settings

When shooting neon lights, you can try to use a low f-stop such as f/1.8 to make sure your lens is wide open and your film is adequately exposed to light. For shutter speed, a faster setting such as 1/125 or higher should help you avoid blurry shots when shooting hand-held.

You can also use a tripod to make sure your camera is steady, and a lightmeter or a lightmeter app on your phone to calculate appropriate exposure for your scene.

Use the bracketing technique

You can use the bracketing technique if you find yourself struggling with the camera settings for a particular shot, or if you simply want to experiment with lighting.

Bracketing involves taking a few shots of the same scene using different exposures, tweaking your camera settings for each shot. For example, you can take one standard image, one darker or underexposed image and another brighter or overexposed image.

Expose your frame multiple times

Multiple exposures are always a great way to explore compositions and the are an especially fun technique to try out with neon lights.

Mix it with other photography styles

Aside from making neon lights the main subject of your photo, you can also mix it with other photography styles such as portraits, using the bright neon lights to double expose with your portrait or as a source of light itself for your subject.

Credits: grazie, velvetbandit, vici, tobyharvard, blueskyandhardrock
Credits: grazie, velvetbandit, vici, tobyharvard, blueskyandhardrock
Credits: grazie, velvetbandit, vici, tobyharvard, blueskyandhardrock
Credits: grazie, velvetbandit, vici, tobyharvard, blueskyandhardrock
Credits: grazie, velvetbandit, vici, tobyharvard, blueskyandhardrock
Credits: grazie, velvetbandit, vici, tobyharvard, blueskyandhardrock

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Photos From Other Students

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