Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

Technology

Announcing Infos.mu

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www.infos.mu

Christina and the kids like to ask me the following during the week-end: “What are we going to do today?” Sometimes, the answer is obvious but, to be frank, sometimes I am not inspired at all and I find it tough to come up with something worthwhile.

In fact, I’ve slowly realised over the years that a lot of Mauritians (and, by extension, foreigners living in Mauritius) do not really know what’s happening in the country and, consequently, waste their free time indulging on the self-contemplation of their navels…

 

That’s why I got the idea of creating a website, www.infos.mu, to inform people about events happening on the island as well as provide practical information not readily available elsewhere. I really want (us) to discover Mauritius differently.  The site aims to become a comprehensive directory of information for Mauritians and foreigners.

Here are cool things you can do on www.infos.mu right now:

Sure, the website is still a work in progress. And I really need to enhance the navigation (any idea of what I could do?)

One key idea of www.infos.mu is that it is a contributory website with user-generated content: anyone can become a contributor and add events which he/she feel are worthwhile. You have an event happening in your region? Do not hesitate to share the event with us.

I would like to thank Ishtiba Meeajane, Liliane Chan as well as Christina who have done a formidable job to help me set up www.infos.mu.

www.infos.mu is a free service provided by Knowledge Seven, my own company which provides consultancy, support and training for opensource software. By the way, I’ve a blog on Knowledge Seven’s website too…

(A precision: the Google ads on the website are, eventually, for covering hosting costs.)

Quick polls result on dpreview

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Photo from Flickr

Just came across results following quite a few polls on dpreview, one of the most popular photography website.

Some of the results are worth commenting.

For “What shooting mode do you most often use?”, half answered Aperture Priority. In general, I am more of a Program guy (during the day) and Manual guy (at night.) But I have also noticed that I tend to use Aperture Priority more now because I have just bought a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8. During the day, you can’t really let the camera choose the aperture as, most of the time, it will tend to choose f/1.8 and this will give you a too shallow depth of field. So, what I do, is that I just AP and select f/8 which gives me admirable results.

 

For “To what extent do you post-process your images?”, most answered “Most shots get a little brightness/contrast and/or sharpening.” This is exactly what I do: some cropping (I love cropping my photos!) and lighting and that’s it. Direct to Flickr if it’s good enough!

To “What single thing contributed most to learning your photographic skills?”, half answered “Practice – I’m 100% self taught.” A quarter answered “Books / magazines / online articles.” This means that 3/4 of photographers out there learnt their art by themselves.

And, finally, “How often do you shoot raw?”, half answered “I only ever shoot raw.” Personally, I am more in favour of getting it right the first time…

Back to film photography

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Photo from Flickr

One month ago, I went back to basics: I bought a roll of Fuji Superia 200 film and revived my dad’s Olympus Mju II compact camera.

 

The experience has been great. As you can see in the above picture, the Mju II is still working well (even if the photo is blurred.) I love the colours and Anya looks beautiful.

Since then, I’ve asked a good friend of mine (Thanks, Patrice!) to buy a 50mm fixed lens for me and I’ve revived my 12 years old Canon EOS 500N film SLR.

I’ve observed that what I like most is to be limited to 36 photos as opposed to the infinite number of photos one can take using a digital camera. Definitely, less is more.