• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Noulakaz

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

  • Home
  • About
  • People
    • Christina & Avinash Meetoo
    • Avinash Meetoo
    • Christina Meetoo
    • Anya Meetoo
    • Kyan Meetoo
  • General
    • News
    • Mauritius
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Business
    • Travel
  • Computing
    • Apple
    • Linux
    • LUGM
    • Programming
    • Web
    • Technology
    • Knowledge Seven
  • Entertainment
    • Music
    • Movies
    • Photography
    • Sports

Archives for January 2005

Making good photos

18 January 2005 By Avinash Meetoo 1 Comment

Making good photos looks easy but is quite difficult in reality.

What is difficult is not mastering the camera as such but learning how to see properly and trying to make it (the dumb camera) record exactly what you want it to record…

I am an amateur photographer who has been making photos since 1997. I own a nice Canon EOS 500N (Rebel G in the USA) and I shoot only colour negatives. COLOUR NEGATIVES ??? Yes, in the country where I live, Mauritius, slides are too expensive to buy and process. So I’ve settled for the colour negatives so disliked by pros. That makes me a qualified amateur, just like you :-)

Still, I want to have nicely composed and exposed photos. So I’ve tried numerous techniques and read several books and I now want to share my experience with you.

A nice photo has a very strong theme (what is its purpose ?), has an easily identified subject and is simple to look at. Compositionally, you must know the rule of thirds and, afterwards, learn to break it. Space is also very important for the subject to be easily identified.

As for the exposure, with modern SLR with evaluative metering, just put on ‘Auto’ and shoot ! Or is it more complicated than that ? You bet :-)

In fact, modern exposure meters (like the one in my Canon) are easily fooled. First of all, it has absolutely no idea of the theme of the photo. It does not know anything about the subject. Sure, the camera knows where the subject is courtesy of its autofocus system, but it does not know if its a child, a big animal, a beautiful girl or a rather non-descript stone… So, the meter choose an arperture value and a shutter speed so that the whole scene becomes a neutral 18% neutral grey when printed. And so, your small brown dog in snow becomes a black dog on a gray background !!! The meter automatically underexpose in order to make the pervasive white snow become neutral gray.

So what must we do ? Compensate !!!

As soon as the meter chooses an exposure, be critical. Is your photo 18% neutral gray ? If this is the case, everything is ok. Pull the trigger ! But, if this isn’t the case (for example, you have a lot of snow or you have a big black car filling the frame) then use your judgement to know how much to compensate. As for myself, I tend to use the Zone System and, especially, the simplified Zone System for correctly exposing negatives which suits me perfectly.

And in case you have to use flash (I use a big Canon 380EX), just don’t use Auto mode. Use either Aperture Priority (choose an adequate aperture for the required depth of field) or Manual Mode (choose everything yourself :-) and let the flash exposure meter expose the subject correctly. If you want to have your background exposed nicely, just use a long shutter speed but, then, don’t forget to use a tripod.

I, personally, find that my flash tend to make my subject (often my two children, Kyan and Anya too brightly illuminated. As I don’t have flash exposure compensation on my Canon EOS 500N, I was thinking changing the ISO value to make the camera think that I have a more sensitive film (ex. use ISO 140 for an ISO 100 film). I think I’ll have to experiment with that. I’ll keep you imformed.

Filed Under: Technology

Forum CouzFC

17 January 2005 By Avinash Meetoo Leave a Comment

CouzFC Logo

I am very pleased to launch our own CouzFC forum today !

As stated, “[there] you’ll find active discussions and, sometimes, verbal insults among some Mauritian cousins who want to stay in touch. The Meetoo’s, the Nagawa’s, the Beeharry’s, the Persand’s, the Seereekissoon’s, the Gya’s and the Luckynarain’s welcome you all to CouzFC !!!”

Have fun !

Filed Under: News

WordPress is here to stay

17 January 2005 By Avinash Meetoo 2 Comments

WordPress

Noulakaz.net has been upgraded today to WordPress as a replacement to Movabletype for the weblog.

There are two main reasons why this is so :

  • Movabletype, being used a lot, is frequently targetted by countless spammers and I was becoming bored of having to delete spam comments every day from my blog. It’s possible to use Movabletype 3.x to solve part of this problem but the licensing issues bothered me. So I went for WordPress which is a 100% open source software.
  • WordPress claimed to be able to import all my Movabletype setup automatically. And effectively, all (well, most) configuration, all posts and all comments were imported in no time.

WordPress rocks !

Filed Under: Linux

Primary Sidebar

Our Personal Websites

Avinash Meetoo
Christina Meetoo
Anya Meetoo
Kyan Meetoo

Random Posts

Sun opens Java

There is no need for a parliament

Collected online resources

Recent Comments

  • Memento Mori by Depeche Mode on I have my dream HiFi setup: Audiolab and Elac
  • Avinash Meetoo on High-End Hi-Fi Audio Companies
  • Gerard Chavagnan on High-End Hi-Fi Audio Companies

Archives

  • March 2023 (5)
  • February 2023 (1)
  • December 2022 (1)
  • November 2022 (1)
  • October 2022 (4)
  • August 2022 (3)
  • July 2022 (3)
  • June 2022 (5)
  • May 2022 (5)
  • January 2022 (3)
  • December 2021 (2)
  • November 2021 (1)
  • October 2021 (1)
  • September 2021 (4)
  • August 2021 (2)
  • July 2021 (14)
  • May 2021 (2)
  • April 2021 (4)
  • March 2021 (9)
  • February 2021 (2)
  • January 2021 (1)
  • October 2020 (1)
  • September 2020 (1)
  • August 2020 (2)
  • July 2020 (5)
  • June 2020 (3)
  • May 2020 (5)
  • April 2020 (6)
  • March 2020 (2)
  • February 2020 (2)
  • January 2020 (2)
  • October 2019 (1)
  • September 2019 (2)
  • July 2019 (2)
  • June 2019 (1)
  • May 2019 (3)
  • April 2019 (2)
  • March 2019 (1)
  • February 2019 (1)
  • January 2019 (3)
  • December 2018 (1)
  • October 2018 (3)
  • August 2018 (2)
  • July 2018 (2)
  • June 2018 (1)
  • May 2018 (1)
  • April 2018 (1)
  • February 2018 (1)
  • December 2017 (1)
  • October 2017 (1)
  • September 2017 (1)
  • August 2017 (1)
  • July 2017 (1)
  • May 2017 (4)
  • April 2017 (3)
  • March 2017 (4)
  • February 2017 (5)
  • January 2017 (3)
  • October 2016 (1)
  • September 2016 (1)
  • August 2016 (4)
  • July 2016 (1)
  • June 2016 (1)
  • March 2016 (3)
  • February 2016 (3)
  • January 2016 (1)
  • December 2015 (1)
  • November 2015 (2)
  • September 2015 (1)
  • August 2015 (3)
  • March 2015 (1)
  • December 2014 (1)
  • November 2014 (4)
  • October 2014 (1)
  • March 2014 (2)
  • February 2014 (3)
  • December 2013 (1)
  • October 2013 (1)
  • September 2013 (1)
  • August 2013 (1)
  • July 2013 (1)
  • June 2013 (2)
  • May 2013 (1)
  • March 2013 (3)
  • January 2013 (2)
  • December 2012 (3)
  • November 2012 (4)
  • September 2012 (3)
  • August 2012 (2)
  • July 2012 (3)
  • June 2012 (2)
  • May 2012 (1)
  • April 2012 (2)
  • February 2012 (1)
  • January 2012 (4)
  • December 2011 (2)
  • November 2011 (1)
  • October 2011 (4)
  • September 2011 (2)
  • August 2011 (1)
  • July 2011 (2)
  • June 2011 (4)
  • April 2011 (7)
  • March 2011 (2)
  • February 2011 (1)
  • January 2011 (3)
  • November 2010 (3)
  • October 2010 (1)
  • September 2010 (2)
  • August 2010 (4)
  • July 2010 (2)
  • June 2010 (1)
  • May 2010 (3)
  • April 2010 (4)
  • March 2010 (3)
  • February 2010 (3)
  • January 2010 (5)
  • December 2009 (2)
  • November 2009 (3)
  • October 2009 (1)
  • September 2009 (5)
  • August 2009 (3)
  • July 2009 (1)
  • June 2009 (3)
  • May 2009 (2)
  • April 2009 (7)
  • March 2009 (12)
  • February 2009 (10)
  • January 2009 (5)
  • December 2008 (4)
  • November 2008 (11)
  • October 2008 (6)
  • September 2008 (7)
  • August 2008 (3)
  • July 2008 (8)
  • June 2008 (6)
  • May 2008 (5)
  • April 2008 (7)
  • March 2008 (6)
  • February 2008 (3)
  • January 2008 (6)
  • December 2007 (11)
  • November 2007 (10)
  • October 2007 (7)
  • September 2007 (9)
  • August 2007 (3)
  • July 2007 (7)
  • June 2007 (8)
  • May 2007 (14)
  • April 2007 (11)
  • March 2007 (18)
  • February 2007 (14)
  • January 2007 (15)
  • December 2006 (16)
  • November 2006 (10)
  • October 2006 (7)
  • September 2006 (8)
  • August 2006 (8)
  • July 2006 (6)
  • June 2006 (4)
  • May 2006 (13)
  • April 2006 (10)
  • March 2006 (11)
  • February 2006 (7)
  • January 2006 (14)
  • December 2005 (8)
  • November 2005 (6)
  • October 2005 (7)
  • September 2005 (2)
  • August 2005 (6)
  • July 2005 (2)
  • June 2005 (6)
  • May 2005 (15)
  • April 2005 (12)
  • March 2005 (3)
  • February 2005 (8)
  • January 2005 (3)
  • December 2004 (1)
  • November 2004 (2)
  • October 2004 (2)
  • September 2004 (3)
  • August 2004 (3)
  • July 2004 (3)
  • June 2004 (3)
  • May 2004 (6)
  • April 2004 (10)
  • March 2004 (12)
Creative Commons License This work is licensed by Avinash Meetoo under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Unported License.