The Chinese New Year light-up is from Chinatown Point (yellow building in the center, now under renovation) to Pagoda street. It's the year of the dragon, the red arches are a dragon (the head is on the left, hidden by the banner across the road).
For a photo like this, you want to cram in as many lights as possible. Which is why I went up to the pedestrian bridge to get both the dragon and the neon lights across the road, into the photo. Well okay, truth is that I just walked around and tried different angles. You can't always plan the best shot, you need to explore.
- Nikon D7000, Sigma 20mm f1.8
- At 20mm, f2, ISO 200, 1/30 seconds
- Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, incandescent white balance
- Picasa: Auto contrast, fill light
I was testing out the Sigma 20mm f1.8. If not for the large f2 aperture, I'd have to go to ISO 800.
Found out that I wasn't getting clear photos from it because it has a focus offset problem. By setting -4 focus offset in the D7000, the lens is much more usable and I'll be using it more often in the future.
With a wide angle lens, you've got quite a large depth of field, even at f2. For most scenery, you don't have to worry about the depth of field. But for this photo, the neon lights at the bottom of the bottom of the photo are too close and are out of focus. Luckily, that's not very noticeable.
