Neon Sign

In town, there’s this tea and coffee shop that I’ve always been rather intrigued with.

After having guzzled lord knows how many gallons of coffee in college and grad school, I fell out of the habit of hanging out at these kinds of shops after I exited my 20s. But my wife likes to go to them every now and again.

When she does, I sometimes glom on with camera in hand. Since I’m shy and feel a bit odd going into a coffee or tea shop by myself just to take pictures, it helps to have an assistant of sorts give me justification for being inside the shop even when I’m not having anything to drink.

Just the other day, the neon sign sitting at the back of the shop that intrigues me the most caught my eye and made me smile.

That afternoon, I had an excellent camera and lens combo on hand. The famous Carl Zeiss Jena 58mm f/2 Biotar lens has tons of character. It’s one of my favorite lenses. After having adapted it to my cropped-sensor Canon EOS M50 for a while, I’m all the more excited to be able to use it as a normal lens on my new full-frame Canon EOS R8.

Although I typically avoid shooting with any lens wide open, in this case the subject called for the kind of vignetting that I knew would happen at f/2. I also like the softness around the outer edges of the neon sign. Some reviewers may disparage the imperfections of lenses both old and new, but I like to embrace them as creative tools.

Out of the camera, the image looked a bit flat. In Digital Photo Professional, I first did a quick auto gamma adjustment. Doing so tightened up the range of values from black point to white point, but it brightened shadows far too much, so I returned that setting back to zero. I also brightened the midtones a bit and increased contrast.