Leaving the Amazon Kindle ecosystem

Ameel Khan February 18, 2025

The Amazon Kindle is an amazing product that revolutionised the world of reading when it was launched in 2007.

Sadly, it is now time for me to completely leave this ecosystem.

Happily, there are other, non-shitty ecosystems that you can get into instead.

Long-time Kindle user

I got my first Kindle in 2010 as a birthday present from Nadia. This was a second generation Kindle and the first model that was available outside of the US, hence its ‘Kindle 2 international’ name.

The first ebooks I bought were Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series and Larsson was the first author to sell over a million books on Kindle.

Screenshot of an Amazon Kindle library showing the purchase of ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium series Book 1)’ by Stieg Larsson on 14 September 2010.

I even got this Kindle signed by James “The Amazing” Randi when I attended The Amaz!ng Meeting in Sydney towards the end of 2010 :)

Photo of the back of an Amazon Kindle device that’s been signed in gold marker. The signature reads, “To Ameel – James Randi”.

Since 2010, various versions and iterations of Kindles have been my default book reading device.

Close-up photo of a man holding a Kindle Oasis device while sitting in a residential garden. The eReader’s screen shows the cover of the book, ‘The Left-Handed Booksellers of London’ by Garth Nix.

As a result, Nadia and I have built an extensive ebook collection.

Screenshot of an Amazon account ‘Digital Content’ screen showing 760 ebooks and 75 audiobooks.

I also have a decent audiobook collection on Audible, which is great for books like Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary, in which your experience is elevated by the sound effects, or Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, in which the narration really helps you with the pronunciation of names.

Screenshot of an Audible library listing three books: ‘Project Hail Mary’ by Andy Weir; ‘Lock In (Narrated by Amber Benson)’ by John Scalzi; and ‘Ancillary Justice: The Imperial Radch Series, Books 1’ by Ann Leckie.

Amazon purchased Audible in 2008 and, for a while, they were fantastic stewards of this service. For example, they launched the Audible Frontiers imprint through which they started recording science fiction and fantasy books that deserved to be heard; and they launched the ‘Whispersync for Voice’ feature that allowed you to switch seamlessly between the Kindle ebook and Audible audiobook versions of the book you were reading.

All of this was really cool and, as a result, I have been heavily invested in the Kindle-Audible ecosystem for years.

Not all sunshine and rainbows

Your books are not yours

The biggest issue with the Kindle and Audible ecosystem has always been that you don’t actually “buy” any books, you only “licence” them.

What this means is that Amazon can delete any book from your library if it itself loses the licence to that book – like it did in 2009 with, ironically, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm. Though in that specific case it was because Amazon discovered it didn’t own the correct licence in the first place. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You also can’t resell, back-up, or archive the books you thought you had purchased, and your kids can’t inherit your ebook collection either. In fact, if you delete your Amazon account, all your books go with it.

This has not been a concern to me because there are, um, workarounds to these restrictions for both Kindle and Audible.

Animated GIF showing a man tapping his head as if to say, “that’s smart”.

Market power and DRM

Even though this ecosystem’s licencing restrictions weren’t an issue for me, Amazon’s market dominance and, later, market abuse became an issue, especially on the audiobook side. This became so egregious that, in 2014, Cory Doctorow stopped selling his audiobooks via Audible.

It took me a little longer to catch on, so with the exception of Project Hail Mary in 2021, I stopped buying audiobooks from Audible in 2017. These days, if I do buy an audiobook, I buy it directly from the author if I can – like I do with Doctorow’s books. (It helps, of course, that I rarely listen to audiobooks any more. These days I mostly listen to podcasts.)

Things aren’t as bad on the Kindle side since there have long been viable alternatives. Kobo launched its ebook store in 2009, for example, and then its first eReader in 2010. Authors, publishers, and other booksellers have been selling ebooks online for years as well.

Not all doom and gloom, either

Not everything about the Kindle ecosystem is bad, of course. They were pioneers and innovators in the e-ink reader space, their device-to-device synchronisation is great, their devices themselves are excellent…the list goes on.

Low ebook prices

Amazon also made the most of their market power by, basically, forcing publishers to keep mass-market ebook prices low. We all know that book publishers (like film studios and record companies) work very hard to extract as much value as they can from both creators and consumers. But, for a while, thanks to the likes of Apple (with iTunes) and Amazon (with Kindle), the price of music tracks and ebooks remained low.

To counter Amazon’s insistence on keeping ebook prices low (typically US$9.99 for most fiction books), Apple and the large book publishers colluded to raise overall ebook prices, for which they were rightly sued. The book publishers all settled so, in 2013, only Apple was found guilty of price fixing.

Ebook prices have gone up since then, but I’m sure they would have be a lot higher if publishers could have had their way all along.

Still the default choice

The upshot of all this is that, even though I’ve been buying ebooks and audiobooks from authors, publishers, and other online bookstores in parallel for years, Amazon remained my go-to place for buying ebooks.

Switching ecosystems

Laziness, inertia, and a few remnants of brand loyalty (more so after the book publishers’ collusion) kept me in the Kindle ecosystem, but Amazon’s enshittification continued, so last year I finally had the time and brain-space to start moving to a different ecosystem.

I prefer to read on e-ink devices (meaning no Apple Books or Google Books), which means the obvious alternative was the Kobo ecosystem and so that’s where I went.

Hello Kobo

I formally started my move to the Kobo ebook and audiobook ecosystem when I bought the Kobo Clara Colour eReader. I still had a few unread books on Kindle – which I’m still making my way through, by the way – but that was when I switched to using this Kobo as my primary reading device.

Making the switch was pretty easy since I already had a Kobo account. I’d created one when Humble Bundle offered a great Kobo-only deal on the entire Seanan McGuire urban fantasy book collection and, since she’s my favourite author, I used this opportunity to create an account and put one foot in the door of this nicer ecosystem. (And I’m not just saying ‘nicer’ because Kobo is a Canadian company.)

Beefing up my library

I haven’t transferred all my Kindle books to my Kobo eReader – I have them archived on my computer and I’ve read most of them anyway – but I have bought a bunch more ebooks since then. The recent Ursula K. Le Guin Humble Bundle helped with that too!

All this to say that I’ve already got myself a good starting library in the Kobo ecosystem, which is cool.

Screenshot of the Kobo library showing 93 ebooks.

Final nail in the Kindle coffin

For me the final nail in the coffin for the Kindle ecosystem came when Amazon announced that, from 26 February 2025, they would no longer allow you to download ebooks to your computer to transfer them via USB to your Kindle device.

Screenshot from an Amazon Kindle library pop-up window with the title, “Download & transfer via USB”. The text under this reads, “Transfer Tip: After downloading, use your USB cable to connect your computer and Kindle. Your Kindle will appear as a drive on your computer. Copy your downloaded file from your computer to your Kindle’s documents folder.” Below this is an information icon with this text next to it, “Starting February 26, 2025, the “Download & Transfer via USB” option will no longer be available. You can still send Kindle books to your Wi-Fi enabled devices by selecting the “Deliver or Remove from Device” option.” This is followed by a hyperlink that reads, “Learn more about managing downloads”.

This is the mechanism I use to archive my ebooks (ie I don’t download them to copy to my Kindle, I download them to back up my library). So, with this option gone, none of the books I’ll buy in the future will actually be mine to own.

Screenshot of a news article by Andew Liszewski from The Verge with the title, “Amazon’s killing a feature that let you download and backup Kindle books”. The article slug reads, “After February 26th, you can only download books from the Kindle store to your e-reader over Wi-Fi”.

That to me is unacceptable, so it was finally time to pull the plug and exit the entire Kindle ecosystem once and for all.

Screenshot of an article by Michael Kozlowsky in Good E-Reader with the title, “Amazon is not to be trusted anymore with their Kindle e-reader”.

Last few Kindle downloads

My first step was to download the 1-2 books I hadn’t yet downloaded from my Kindle library.

I have a recurring monthly reminder to do these downloads but, because I’d been spending all my time on my Kobo, I hadn’t kept this up.

Cancelling Kindle preorders

My second, and more future-focused, step was to cancel the three preorders I had with Kindle. Fortunately, this is really easy to do.

Screenshot of an Amazon account’s ‘Your Orders’ screen that shows two cancelled book preorders. The cancelled preorders are for ‘Overgrowth’ by Mira Grant and ‘Exit Strategy’ by Lee Child and Andrew Child.

Preordering on Kobo

My final step was to add those preorders to my Kobo account.

Though, as I discovered, I had mistakenly preordered the upcoming Mira Grant book on both ecosystems already! (Mira Grant is one of Seanan McGuire’s aliases, fyi.)

Screenshot of a Kobo library showing eight books, six of which are preorders. The preorders are for ‘Overgrowth’ by Mira Grant, ‘The Shattering Peace’ by John Scalzi, ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World Except Me’ by Django Wexler, ‘Automatic Noodle’ by Annalee Newitz, ‘The River Has Roots’ by Amal El-Mohtar, and ‘Exit Strategy’ by Lee Child and Andrew Child. The two books in the library are, ‘The Reappearance of Rachel Price’ by Holly Jackson and ‘Under the Whispering Door’ by TJ Klune.

End of an era

So that’s it then.

I’ll read the last few books I have left on my Kindle, buy a second Kobo device (this one for Nadia, since we share a library), and move on with my life.

It’s sad to be leaving an ecosystem that brought me so much joy and convenience, and also brought so much good to the world of reading. But once you’ve made enshittification your business strategy, the only way for your ecosystem is down. And the sooner users jump ship to a more open, distributed ecosystem, the better.

*sigh*

Screenshot of an email from Kobo with the title, “Congrats on finishing Five Survive”. An image at the top of the email shows the Rakuten Kobo logo and has the title, “We’ve got your next read covered”. Text below this reads, “We love a good ending, but there’s nothing better than a new beginning”.

Start of a new era

Fortunately, all is not lost!

There are eight days left to download your Kindle books, so there’s plenty of time to archive your whole library.

Once you’ve done that, there are three large ebook ecosystems you can easily switch to: Kobo (Canada), Apple Books (USA), and Google Books (USA). There a bunch smaller ecosystems too, of course, like Vivlio (France), Tolino (Germany), and Nook (USA). However I think most people will jump to one of the other big ones. (Unless you’re a big Barnes & Noble customer, in which case the Nook is for you.)

Alternatively, if you don’t want to get into a new, closed ecosystem, you can buy DRM-free ebooks from lots of places online (including most bookstores) and use any number of non-affiliated eReader devices to read your books, with ONYX BOOX and reMarkable being the most popular in Australia.

So let the reading continue! And hopefully this time without any DRM or shitty business strategies to slow you down :)

PS. Good E-Reader wrote a nice, long history of Kobo back in 2018 if you’re into that kind of stuff.

Giving up on Outlook (new) at work

Ameel Khan November 3, 2024

I like the theory of Microsoft Outlook: an all-in-one personal information manager that handles your email, calendaring, task management, contact management, and RSS news aggregation.

Outlook for Windows promo graphic showing a screenshot of Outlook (new) on a computer and smartphone screen. (Source)

In practice, however, Outlook is a pain. It doesn’t fully comply with internet standards, for example, and its Windows app takes up a lot of computing resources.

Importantly, its latest version, Outlook for Windows – aka ‘Outlook (new)’ – is terrible. And after trying it for several months at work, this week I finally switched back to ‘Outlook (classic)’.

Outlook for business promo graphic showing a screenshot of Outlook (classic) on a computer and smartphone screen. (Source)

Let me list the reasons why

Now I’m someone who loves to use bleeding-edge software. I regularly try out alpha and beta releases of various apps and, as a Linux user, I’m comfortable with apps that have a little less polish (or sometimes a lot less polish) than commercial versions of the same thing.

But there were a bunch of things in ‘Outlook (new)’ that I just couldn’t deal with anymore. I even made a list.

Some functionality was missing or severely degraded compared to the older ‘Outlook (classic)’:

You can’t open shared mailboxes
Auto-replace text is not fully functional
Filtering/sorting of emails is much more difficult
Spell-check functionality is inconsistent: sometimes it only works half-way through an email and sometimes the red squiggly lines that are supposed to appear under the misspelled word don’t align with the text (the line appears in the middle of the word or it appears a line or two above the word)

The lack of compliance with internet standards is really irritating too. Especially when it comes to paragraph spacing around bullet points because that is rendered in an inconsistent manner:

sometimes the paragraph space before/after your bullet points remains and
sometimes it disappears when the email is read or replied-to.

The most annoying annoyances

What annoys me the most, I think, is how you keep losing focus every time you perform a basic action:

When you press the ‘delete’ key to delete an email, focus doesn’t immediately move to the next email in the inbox. So if you press ‘delete’ again, nothing happens because no email is selected. Yes, it shows you the next email, it’s just that this email is not selected in the inbox.
The same happens when you (click-and-drag) move an email to another folder: it shows you the next email in your original folder, but that email isn’t selected (ie in focus).
When you unpin an email from the top of your inbox (which is the one piece of functionally I loved in the new Outlook), you lose focus on that now-unpinned email. So if you were thinking of moving this email to a folder (now that you’re done with it), you can’t do that easily. You have to scroll down through your inbox to find the email again. And because it’s no longer selected in your inbox, it’s not shaded in a different colour and so it doesn’t stand out.

These lost-focus annoyances all stem from the fact that ‘Outlook for Windows’ is basically a web app in installable-software wrapping. Meaning the kind of intuitive focus-shifting that you used to get in ‘Outlook (classic)’ you can’t replicate in the web version of the same thing. Or maybe you can and they just haven’t gotten around to it yet? Either way, this focus loss was really starting to shit me.

Happy days are here again

The upshot of all this is that I’m back to using ‘Office (classic)’ – which is basically the latest version of ‘Outlook for business’ from Office 2019 – and I haven’t been happier!

Oh, and in case you’re wondering. For my personal email, calendaring, etc on my Windows and Linux computers, I use the fantastic Mozilla Thunderbird (10/10 would recommend).

Thunderbird promo graphic showing a screenshot of Thunderbird on a computer screen. (Source)

Refurbished ThinkPad FTW!

Ameel Khan May 17, 2024

I bought a laptop that replaces three devices with a single one.

The best part: it’s not even a new laptop. It’s a refurbished Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 9) from 2021 that I bought from Reboot-IT :)

Product photos showing the front-on and angled views of a black, thin, and light laptop.

The three devices this replaces are my:

Travel device: an underpowered and now end-of-life travel Windows tablet/laptop that, as of this month, no longer receives operating system updates;
Portable device: a high-performance, but heavy and bulky gaming laptop with an almost-dead battery that I have since installed Linux on;
Back-up windows device: a gaming desktop that developed a hardware fault a few months ago but is still my back-up Windows computer.

I have both Windows 11 and Linux Mint installed on my new (to me) laptop, with Linux Mint as the primary operating system.

(Windows I have on there just in case I need to use the full Microsoft Office suite for something or if my current gaming desktop dies and I urgently need to use Windows for something. Both scenarios are unlikely, but not completely out of the question.)

This isn’t even my first ThinkPad

This laptop is actually the third ThinkPad in my life. My current work laptop is also a ThinkPad X1 Carbon, though that is a sixth generation (Gen 6) model from 2018.

My first ThinkPad was a ThinkPad X210 Tablet PC that I bought in 2010. I saved up for three years to be able to afford that, and it was the most I’d ever spent on any electronic device in my life (equivalent to $4,800 in today’s money!).

Photo of a brand new, chunky, black ThinkPad tablet PC lying on a brown dining table. Lying on the left of the laptop are some users guides and warranty documentation. Lying on the right is a black, ThinkPad-branded wireless mouse.

I loved that laptop and used it for four years before replacing it with my first gaming laptop in 2014.

What’s even cooler is that it still works just fine! Here are my two ThinkPads side-by-side, with the chonky, twisty boy on the left running Ubuntu and the thin-and-light one on the right running Linux Mint.

Collage of two photos showing black ThinkPad laptops face-on. The photo on the left shows a small, chunky tablet PC and is labeled ‘Lenovo ThinkPad X201 Tablet PC (2010)’. The photo of the right shows a sleek, thin laptop and is labeled ‘Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 (2021)’.

The joy of underpowered devices

There are three reasons I went with a refurbished laptop instead of buying a new one (like I have every few years since 2006):

My primary operating system on this laptop is Linux. And, unlike Windows, Linux doesn’t need fancy new hardware to run perfectly well for years on end. So there was no need for me to buy a brand new device.
Refurbished laptops are a whole lot cheaper than new ones. You can buy 7-10 year old ThinkPads for $400-600 and 3-7 year old ThinkPads for $700-900. In comparison, a current-generation ThinkPad (Gen12) with the same specs as the one I just bought will set you back $3,400. Buying used or refurbished tech isn’t for everyone, of course. But I’m enough of a tech geek to be comfortable rolling with whatever I get.
I didn’t need a high-performance device. I wanted something thin and light and capable, not something screamingly fast. This is the same reason why, earlier in the year, I bought a Lenovo Tab M8 eight-inch tablet ($170 on sale) instead of an iPad Mini ($830 for the lowest-spec model). I just wanted something to read books and email on, and that tablet lets me do everything I need. Same with this laptop. I already have a powerful gaming PC for all my gaming and multimedia editing needs so I don’t need my portable device to be top-of-the-line or even from this year’s product line.

Linux as my daily driver

What I’m looking most forward to, I think, is using Linux a lot more than I have in the past.

I’ve used Linux on and off since 1996, but I’ve never had it as my primary operating system. And, in some ways, it’s still not that. My gaming desktop is supremely capable and, in most cases, that’s what I’ll use first.

But now that I have a laptop that is actually usable (unlike my old Windows tablet/laptop) and portable (unlike my old gaming laptop), I expect I’ll have Linux in front of my a lot more often. That should be fun, so onward and upward I go :)

Networking, security & backups in 2024

Ameel Khan April 21, 2024

I made a couple of upgrades to our home network recently so I thought I’d map it out and talk about it a little.

Home network

About a year and a half ago we bought a house. One of its major selling points (at least for me) was that it came pre-wired, with ethernet cables already installed in the walls.

Here’s how I used that to set up our home network – one that provides high quality wired or Wi-Fi internet access in all rooms, bathrooms, and outside areas.

Network diagram titled ‘Home network’. The diagram shows four room locations, one roaming location, and wired ethernet cables in the wall of the house. The garage is where the internet is connected via an NBN modem is. That room also has a router, switch, NAS, and printer – all of which have wired connections. The downstairs living room has a network switch, TV, UHD player, and home theatre – all of which have wired connections. The upstairs retreat has a Wi-Fi extender + switch and TV, UHD player, and home theatre. All but the home theatre have wired connections. The upstairs home office has a desktop with a wired connection. Finally, we have some roaming phones, tablets, laptops, etc that are connected via Wi-Fi.

I had two main goals when planning this network:

Put all bandwidth-heavy activities on the wired network. This includes things like 4K media streaming to our TVs and the backing up of large media files from my desktop to the NAS. Doing that leaves the Wi-Fi network free for our laptops, phones, and smart home gadgets.
Make sure our work laptops are a single wall away from a Wi-Fi access point. Both Nadia and I work from home at least two days a week and both of us do lots of video conferencing. So our work laptops (which we use upstairs) need to have access to a strong Wi-Fi signal.

Happily I was able to achieve both of those goals.

With this set-up Nadia and I can do simultaneous video conferencing for work without any issues. And I can do things like download hundreds of gigabytes of computer game data to my desktop without interfering with the TV show Nadia that is streaming downstairs.

New router and a UPS

A couple of weeks ago I replaced our ailing primary router (all its ethernet ports had died) with a Synology WRX560. And because our secondary router is a Synology RT2600ac with the latest firmware installed, I’ve been able to configure that as an extender. So now we have a mesh Wi-Fi network throughout the house.

Finally, this weekend I put our primary router, NBN modem, and NAS behind a CyberPower UPS. I’m pretty sure our previous router developed its issues because of recent power surges and outages. This UPS has automatic voltage regulation so it’ll protect our primary networking devices (and NAS) while also giving us about an hour of back-up battery power.

Protecting our data and network

With everything always connected, I need to make sure our devices and gadgets are secure. I do this using the Swiss cheese model of layered network security.

All security layers have some holes (like a slice of Swiss cheese does) but, by adding multiple layers with differently-arranged holes, you can minimize the chance of anything getting through.

In our case we have protections at the router layer, operating system layer, and browser layer.

Screenshot of a diagram titled ‘Security strategy’. The diagram has three columns with icons for browser, operating system, and router. Each column is split into incoming and outgoing directions, with risk mitigation measures listed under each one. The router column has active threat protection, two-factor authentication, and auto lock-out under incoming; and it has Cloudflare DNS under outgoing. The operating system column has active threat protection, full drive encryption, and 3-2-1+ backups under incoming; and it has NextDNS under outgoing. The browser column has password manager, two-factor authentication, DNS over HTTPS, HTTPS-only, and uBlock origin under outgoing.

Incoming controls

Active defense against incoming attacks is managed through threat protection at the router and operating system levels.

Passive defense is managed by using things like full drive encryption (which means upgrading to Windows 11 Pro so we can use BitLocker) and a comprehensive back-up strategy (more on this in a minute).

Outgoing controls

Since malware and ransomware attacks are often triggered by what you do in your browser, we use layers of outgoing security to protect against this:

Our primary router is configured to use Cloudflare’s DNS service,
our operating systems (in our computers, phones, and tablets) are all configured to use NextDNS, and
our web browsers all use uBlock Origin and a bunch of other security and privacy-forward configurations.

Finally, all our online accounts use unique, long, randomly-generated passwords that are managed by the Bitwarden password manager. And we have two-factor authentication set-up (using Aegis) on all the accounts that offer this feature.

Recovering from a disaster

If, in spite of all those protections, things do go horribly wrong – or maybe if there’s a fire or natural disaster – our last line of defence is a comprehensive back-up strategy.

A 3-2-1 back-up strategy – the least you should be aiming for – says you need to have:

3 copies of your data,
on 2 different mediums,
with at least 1 copy in the cloud.

We have a 4-4-2 back-up strategy with:

4 copies of our data,
on 4 different mediums,
with 2 copies in the cloud.

Screenshot if a graphic titled ‘Back-up strategy’. The screenshot shows backups from a desktop. There are constant, selective back-ups to a cloud sync location; hourly, selective back-ups to a cloud backup location; and hourly, comprehensive back-ups to a NAS backup location.

How I do it

I use Sync.com to maintain a constant, synchronized copy of all my important files in the cloud. This gives me two copies, on two different mediums, with at least one copy in the cloud.

I then use Arq to simultaneously (a) backup a selection of key files to a cloud storage bucket and (b) backup all my files (which includes large, replaceable media files) to our network attached storage (NAS) at home. So that’s two more copies, on two additional mediums, one of which is in the cloud.

Naturally all these files are encrypted before leaving my computer and access to the NAS and all those cloud services is protected with unique, long, random passwords and two-factor authentication.

Keeping up with our needs

Doing all this takes time and effort, and it doesn’t come cheap. But so much of our lives is online these days that the cost of inaction – and the risk of losing that much of our lives – is much higher than the cost of doing everything I’ve talked about above.

It wasn’t always like this for us, of course. Our cost and effort has kept pace with what we’ve been able to afford along the way. We’re just privileged to be in a position where we can do something this sophisticated and automated. (Gone are the good old days of backing up to multiple 3½ inch floppy disks and, later, USB sticks.)

I hope, regardless of your personal set-up, that you too are doing the best you can to keep yourself connected, but protected.

I bought a camera!

Ameel Khan January 1, 2023

It’s a Fujifilm X-S10 and it’s really cool.

Face-on photo of a Fujifilm X-S10 camera.

I finally outgrew my existing camera system

I’ve been wanting to get an interchangeable-lens camera for years, but I wasn’t buying one because these types of cameras are:

Inconvenient: they’re bulky, heavy, expensive, and they have a learning curve
Unnecessary: I wasn’t being limited creatively by the camera I already had

I’ve bought one now because both those things have changed…

1. Camera technology has evolved

Mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras (MILCs) came onto the market several years ago and they’re smaller, lighter, and cheaper than DSLRs. They do still have a learning curve though.

The best part is that all the top camera brands now make mirrorless cameras, so there are lots of models to choose from at different price points.

Screenshot of the digiDirect camera store website showing all the mirrorless cameras they have available for sale. In the left column of the website is a list that shows how many mirrorless cameras each brand has for sale. These numbers range from 1 (ILFORD) to 65 (Nikon).

2. I reached the limit of what I could do with my existing camera set-up

My current camera is a Pixel 6 Pro smartphone. It is a highly capable camera and is something I have on me at all times. However, it has a relatively small imaging sensor, and the capabilities of its lenses are limited by the thickness of the phone itself.

Google’s computational photography does let you take some truly excellent photos, of course, but I’m now at the stage in which I want both higher quality images and more precise, manual control over my photo taking. That’s not something any smartphone camera can offer.

That said, for a while I did extend the capabilities of my phone’s camera by using external lenses designed for smartphones. The telephoto, wide-angle, and macro lenses from Moment let me take some really cool photos, likes the ones below. But using these lenses was only ever a steppingstone to where I want to go to now.

Collage showing photos taken from primary, macro, tele, and wide angle lenses.

I will continue to use my phone camera, of course. As they say, “the best camera is the one you have with you” and I do have my phone on me literally all the time. So I expect many of my everyday photos will still be shot using that.

That said, the whole point of getting a small and light mirrorless camera like the Fujifilm X-S10 is that I can carry it with me pretty much everywhere I go. I almost never leave home without my backpack and this new camera will now be added to my everyday carry.

Close-up photo of a Fujifilm X-S10 camera lying on a table, party wrapped in a protective pouch.

Choosing my camera upgrade path

Once I made the decision to get a mirrorless camera, the question was: which one?

That then led to four other questions:

What’s my budget? This was between $1-2k for the camera body, kit lens, and maybe one additional prime lens.
What do I intend to do with my new camera? Mostly take non-professional photos of my life (ie family, pets, events, travels, streetscapes, landscapes) and occasionally a few short videos. Even more occasionally use the camera as webcam (eg when I’m presenting remotely at a conference).
Which camera system (ie body and lenses) do I want to buy into? I wasn’t particularly fussed. That said, I wanted to invest in a mirrorless camera system that I could grow into and evolve my photography with.
What else is important to me? A camera that I can carry in my backpack with me everywhere, so something that’s small and light. A camera with a good auto mode and good auto focus. A camera that colour-grades the photos the way I like them, so I won’t have to tweak the colours of most of the photos I want to share with people. And, ideally, a camera with weather proofing and built-in image stabilisation.

Price range

After a great deal of research – which I thoroughly enjoyed doing, by the way – I concluded that I needed to get an intermediate ($1,000+) or midrange (~$2,000) mirrorless APS-C camera.

Beginner level cameras (ie point-and-shoots) and budget mirrorless cameras (ie entry level mirrorless ones) didn’t meet my functionality and capability requirements. While more professional cameras (ie mirrorless full-frame ones) were both too large and very much beyond my budget.

I’d have preferred a midrange camera – all models of which seem to have weather proofing and in-built image stabilisation – but I was happy to settle for an intermedia level camera since most midrange cameras are out of my price range (unless you can get them second hand or during a really good sale).

Short list

This was the initial shortlist I came up with:

Sony Alpha A6400 (announced Jan 2019)
Sony Alpha A6600 (Aug 2019)
Nikon Z50 (Oct 2019)
Fujifilm X-S10 (Oct 2020)
Canon EOS R10 (May 2022)

I had two Sony cameras on my list because the A6400 is an intermediate level camera that I could afford first-hand and the A6600 is a midrange level camera that I might have been able to get second-hand (if I got lucky).

Photo of a digiDirect shop storefront, a digital camera store. On the display window next to the entrance is a large poster that reads “Boxing Day” and “Our biggest sale of the year is back”.

The Fujifilm X-S10 has everything I need, and them some

Each camera in my shortlist had its pros and cons but, ultimately, these are the things that got me to pick the Fujifilm X-S10 over the other options.

Great colours

I prefer the out-of-the-box photo colours you get from Fujifilm and Canon cameras over the colours you get from Nikon and Sony cameras. Had I got the Sony A6400 – which was my very close second choice – I would have had to manually tweak the colours of many of the photos I took and then wanted to publish.

(This is what I have to do with my Pixel 6 Pro right now, by the way. In the world of Android smartphones, I prefer the photo colours you get from Samsung phones over those you get from any other Android phone camera. But since I very, very much prefer everything else about Pixel phones, photo colours end up being what I compromise on. As a result I have to slightly tweak the colours of most of the photos I take with my Pixel phone before I share them or publish them online.)

Excellent extensibility and growth

Fujifilm and Sony both have a fantastic lens selection (including third-party lenses) and they both have a great camera upgrade path (ie more capable camera bodies you can upgrade to over time).

There are many more third-party (and therefore lower cost) lenses you can buy for Sony cameras versus Fujifilm cameras. But the Fujifilm lenses you use on their APS-C cameras bodies are the same ones you use on their full-frame camera bodies. So if I was to upgrade to a full-frame Fujifilm camera body in the future, I’d get to keep all my existing lenses. With Sony I’d have to switch to a different type of lens and so all my existing lenses would be useless to me.

Not that I’m looking to upgrade to a full-frame camera any time soon, by the way. But who knows where I’ll be in ten years and what I’ll think of past-me if I do decide to make that change.

In-body image stabilisation (IBIS)

You generally only get IBIS in midrange cameras. The Fujifilm X-S10 is the only intermediate level camera body with IBIS. Like the Swiss flag, that to me is a big plus.

I don’t expect to be shooting much handheld video (which is what IBIS is great for) and I don’t expect to be shooting professional-level landscape photos (for which a tripod is recommended anyway) but I’ll take any extra edge I can get to take sharper photos.

USB-C power and audio

Another thing you only get in midrange cameras is a headphone port that lets you monitor your audio while you’re videoing something. The Fujifilm X-S10 is the only intermediate level camera that has a USB-C port that you can plug your headphones into (via a provided adapter) to monitor live audio.

I don’t expect to be shooting much video with this camera, but that audio monitoring capability is definitely good to have.

Oh, and as a bonus, this USB-C port can also be used to power the camera. This is great for both charging your battery and for when you want to use your camera as a webcam.

Black and white photo of a woman just before she bursts into a smile.

It's not all rainbows and unicorns though

For all its features and capabilities, the Fujifilm X-S10 also has a few limitations.

Limited auto-focus and burst-mode

Sony cameras have the best auto-focus and face detect capabilities, and they do a great job with burst-mode photos as well (ie taking several high-quality photos per second). The Fujifilm X-S10 isn’t as good at either of those, so I don’t expect fantastic results when photographing sports and action. I’m okay with that. I don’t take many sports or action photos anyway.

Limited 4K video recording

This camera has a thirty-minute limit on recording 4K video in-camera. (There’s no limit if you’re using an external recorder.) That also doesn’t bother me because I’m not buying this camera for its video capabilities. If I was going to be doing more videography than photography, then I would probably have bought one of the Sony cameras instead.

No weather sealing

No intermediate level cameras are weather sealed. That means I can’t take this camera out in the rain. And I need to be careful when using it around sand or water as well; or when its super dusty outside. But that’s okay because I didn’t expect to be doing (much of) that anyway.

Photo of a stuffed toy version of a webcomic panel that shows a dog with a hat holding a white coffee mug that reads ‘This is fine’.

Taking the next steps in my photography journey

Now that I’ve finally got my hands on this camera, it’s time to learn to use it properly. I’ll publish another post later in which I list all the useful learning resources I’ve used so far.

For now let me leave you with a comparison that shows the quality of photos you get from the Google Pixel 6 Pro smartphone camera compared to the photos you get from the Fujifilm X-S10 mirrorless camera. I should note that the objective of this photo was to focus on the fence, and only on the fence. It’s cool to see what you can achieve with the Fuji without even trying too hard.

Collage of two photos of the same scene taken by two different cameras: the Google Pixel 6 Pro and the Fujifilm X-S10. The collage is titled ‘Focus on the fence’. In the foreground of the scene is the ornamental top of a metal fence. Behind that is a garden with some bushes, more of the fence, cars parked on the road, and several trees. In the Google Pixel 6 Pro photo the fence is focus while everything else is slightly out of focus, but still very much recognisable. In the Fujifilm X-S10 photo only the fence is focus, while everything else behind the fence is pleasingly blurred and out of focus.

That comparison above highlights the two specific things I’m most looking forward to right out of the gate with my new camera (versus my smartphone camera), which are its ability to:

do precise focusing on your subject
shoot photos with a narrow depth of field (in which everything in the foreground and in the background are pleasingly out of focus)

So onwards and upwards! Let the learning and then the photographing begin.

Digital cameras through the years

Ameel Khan September 18, 2022

As I dug through my old photos to precisely date my lost Instagram years, it occurred to me that I hadn’t documented anywhere all the digital cameras I’ve been using since 2005. So here’s that list in a nice timeline for future reference.

Infographic showing a series of digital cameras and smartphones placed along a timeline from 2005 to 2021

I don’t just have a timeline, I actually have a record of the first date on which I took a photo using each of these cameras. So, for completeness’ sake…

Olympus µ-20: 4 Jan 2005
Sony Ericsson K750i: 6 May 2006
Canon IXUS 120 IS: 23 Aug 2008
BlackBerry Bold 9000: 25 Jun 2009
HTC Desire HD: 27 Nov 2011
Apple iPhone 4: 1 Dec 2012
Samsung Galaxy S III: 2 Feb 2013
Samsung Galaxy Note 4: 9 Nov 2014
Google Pixel XL: 2 Nov 2016
Google Pixel 3XL: 18 Dec 2018
Google Pixel 6 Pro: 28 Oct 2021

Fun times, and some really good photos too – the oldest of which you can see on my Flickr photostream, by the way (which I don’t post to anymore).

I look forward to seeing which camera – smartphone-based or otherwise – I get next.

UPDATE: I bought a new camera, a Fujifilm X-S10, in December 2022.

Proton anniversary

Ameel Khan July 12, 2022

When you support Proton, Proton supports you.

Screenshot of an email from Proton. The title of the email reads “Happy Proton anniversary! We’re giving you extra storage for free.”

Workarounds

Ameel Khan April 25, 2022

There are four types of tech users:

Regular users: they only use what works; they do things the way they’ve always done them; they aren’t good at troubleshooting
Power users: they know how and, more importantly, why things work the way they do; they can troubleshoot, find solutions, and find workarounds
Fixers: when something goes wrong, they don’t just find a workaround, they actually figure out what’s happened and then they properly fix it
Hackers: they figure out why things went wrong and how else things can go wrong; they find the edge cases that make things go wrong

I bring this up because, while I’m usually a fixer, when I don’t have enough fucks to give I’m happy to just be a power user.

Screenshot of a Kindle Store page taken from an Amazon Kindle Oasis device.

Case in point: since my Kindle Oasis firmware got updated last week it has refused to open the book that I was reading when the update took place.

I’d tried everything short of completely factory-resetting the device when I found a workaround: if I go to that book in the Kindle store (via the device) and once there I click the ‘Read’ button, the book opens and works just fine. So that’s what I’m doing now.

Is this a pain? Yes. Does it fix the problem? No. Do I know why there’s a problem? Probably. Do I care enough to do something about it? No.

And so I keep using the workaround :)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Hello Windows 11!

Ameel Khan April 10, 2022

It’s finally time…

Screenshot of a window titled ‘Windows Update’ that reads “Upgrade to Windows 11 is ready—and it’s free!” and “Get the latest version of Windows, with a new look, new features, and enhanced security” plus a button that reads “Download and install”.

This upgrade notification comes six months and five days after Windows 11 was officially released.

And it’s almost exactly a week after I did an in-place Windows 10 upgrade to fix a corrupt print services install that had been messing with my regular Windows updates.

Screenshot of a window titled ‘Windows Update’ with heading that reads “Error encountered” “There were some problems installing updates, but we'll try again later”.

For weeks I’d been getting that unhelpful 0x800f0831 error when trying to update Windows.

To fix this I ran the Windows Update troubleshooter and tried all the troubleshooting tips I could find on the web. Nothing worked.

I then pored through the Windows Update install logs to see what was wrong. I found the error — a Windows install-on-demand printer service installation had been corrupted — but nothing I tried to do fixed that issue.

In the end I had to overwrite my current Windows install with an in-place Windows 10 upgrade. #NucularOption

That finally cleared the logjam because now it’s upgrade time…

Time card image from the SpongeBob cartoon series that reads “Two hours later”.

…and after lots of downloading, installing, rebooting, Windows updating, and app updating, I’m finally all set to enjoy Windows 11!

Screenshot of a welcome window titled “Hi Ameel” that reads “Let’s make sure everything is set up just how you want it” and has a button labelled “Get started”.

So far it’s great!

Crappy online banking security

Ameel Khan January 21, 2022

You’re always only one SIM-jacking event away from losing control of your bank account.

Screenshot of a smartphone text messaging app that shows four text messages. All the messages read: “Don’t share this code with anyone, including NAB. Your security code is XX for Internet Banking password reset”. That six digit numerical code designated by XX changes in each message.

It’s 2022 and still banks don’t offer time-based, one-time tokens (like when you look up a code from Google Authenticator) as your second factor when authenticating with them. It’s embarrassing.

Impressive Pixel 6 Pro camera performance

Ameel Khan October 31, 2021

Whoa. The Pixels 6 Pro’s forward-facing camera really is excellent!

This photo was cropped slightly, but is otherwise completely untouched.

Selfie of a smiling man standing on an outdoor deck on a sunny day, with a residential garden behind him. The man is bald and has a trimmed, salt-and-pepper beard. He is wearing glasses and a t-shirt with the original book cover of Phillip K Dick’s book ‘Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep?’ printed on it.

Also, compare these two untouched (again, only cropped) selfies.

The Pixel 6 Pro (right) does a much better job than the Pixel 3XL (left) that I just upgraded from.

Collage of two selfies of the same man in the same location. The man is bald, has a salt-and-pepper beard, and is wearing glasses and a pair of black wireless headphones. He is standing in a residential garden, with the sun behind him. The photo on the left, captioned 'Pixel 3XL', clearly shows the bright environment he’s in, but his face is shadowed and the clouds in the sky aren’t well defined. In the photo on the right, captioned 'Pixel 6 Pro', his face is well lit and you can see some of the details in the clouds.

Oh, and in case it isn’t bleedingly obvious by now, I bought Google’s latest and greatest smartphone: the Pixel 6 Pro :)

All set for Windows 11

Ameel Khan June 26, 2021

Something to look forward to in (probably) October!

Screenshot from a Windows computer showing a pop-up window with the title “This PC can run Windows 11” and text that reads “Great news - this PC meets all the system requirements for Windows 11, and it’s free. We’ll let you know when it’s ready to install.”

More about Windows 11 here:

Introducing Windows 11 (page)
Introducing Windows 11 (blog post)

Gaming PC FTW!

Ameel Khan February 26, 2021

It’s here! Exactly five months and one day after I ordered it, my Scorptec Blackout Gaming PC is finally up and running – and it’s all that I’d hoped it would be :)

Photo of a wide desk showing a large black desktop computer tower with a Wi-Fi antenna on top of it. Next to the tower is an ultra-widescreen computer monitor. The monitor is switched on and has a cloudy, starry nebula displayed on it. Behind the mo… — Photo of a wide desk showing a large black desktop computer tower with a Wi-Fi antenna on top of it. Next to the tower is an ultra-widescreen computer monitor. The monitor is switched on and has a cloudy, starry nebula displayed on it. Behind the monitor is a pair of desktop speakers. In front of a monitor is a split gaming keyboard and a gaming mouse lying on a mouse pad.

Upgrading my PC gaming, er, game

I’m a PC gamer and over the last few years I’ve been buying myself Gigabyte gaming laptops. But when Microsoft Flight Simulator came out last year and struggled to run on my AERO 15 laptop – which, to be fair, is now three years old – I realised it was finally time to upgrade to a full-on gaming desktop. This decision coincided really nicely with NVIDIA releasing their GeForce 30 series, their latest line of dedicated graphics cards.

So, on the day the RTX 3080 was released (which was 18 Sep 2020 in Australia), I ordered a pre-built gaming PC from Scorptec, my favourite local computer retailer.

(Much as I’d love the idea of assembling my own gaming PC, that’s not something that I want to spend time on. I have several other mini-projects to keep me occupied.)

A graphics card? In this pandemic?

Sadly the COVID-19 pandemic threw a wrench in NVIDIA’s production schedule. While, on the customer side, demand for those graphics cards far outstripped whatever NVIDIA could supply. So, from the middle of September 2020 to the middle of January 2021, my computer desk remained unoccupied.

Photo of a wide, half empty desk with several computer accessories arrayed on it: a pair of desktop speakers along the back; a gaming joystick and throttle; a gaming steering wheel; and three boxes, one each for a keyboard, mouse, and mousepad.

By November 2020 Scorptec had realised just how low the supply of the new NVIDIA graphics cards was going to be, so they created a page on their website though which customers could stay updated on how things were going. My NVIDIA graphics card was ASUS customised and co-branded. When Scorptec’s page was originally launched they’d only managed to fulfil 13% of the pre-orders on that particular card.

By January 2021 those pre-ordered had climbed into the 20% range. That’s when the curved, ultra-widescreen LG computer monitor (38GN950-B) that I’d ordered in December 2020 arrived. (Yay!)

Then, in mid-February – when that number climbed to 38% – I got a message from Scorptec to say that my gaming PC was almost ready to go. (I’d asked for an extra hard disk to be installed and that delayed the order by a couple of additional days.)

So it was on 19 February 2021 that I finally got my hands on this gorgeous machine. Now I can finally play Flight Simulator to my heart’s content. (After its 157GB data download, of course.)

Photo of a desk on which there are: a computer tower, an ultra-widescreen computer monitor, a split keyboard (with backlit keys), a gaming mouse (which a glowing logo), desktop speakers, a gaming joystick, and gaming aircraft throttle, and a large drinking mug. The computer screen shows a window with a long download progress bar.

Throttles and pedals and wheels, oh my!

Funnily enough, Flight Simulator is the game I’ve played least since I got this PC.

Instead of joystick and throttle mode, I’ve gone mostly into steering wheel and pedals mode. (Thrustmaster FTW, either way.)

Photo of a desk on which there are: a computer tower, an ultra-widescreen computer monitor, a split keyboard (with backlit keys), a gaming mouse (which a glowing logo), desktop speakers, and a gaming steering wheel. Below the desk is a set of gaming car foot pedals. Pushed to the sides are a gaming joystick, a gaming aircraft throttle, and a paper stand on which there is a printed diagram of that joystick and what its various keys are mapped to.

The games I’ve been playing most are SnowRunner, BeamNG.drive, DiRT Rally 2.0, and Never Alone – all of which are fantastic and I’d highly recommend. (That last one, of course, is narrative based side-scroller that only requires a keyboard and mouse.)

I’m also really looking forward to Forza Horizon 4 which will finally be released for PC on 10 March.

So here’s to many more hours of gaming enjoyment. If you’re a gamer of any sort too, I wish you many hours on joy on your gaming set-up as well. #GameOn

Contributing to Google Maps and Open Street Map

Ameel Khan February 19, 2020

Turns out the 63 photos I’ve uploaded to Google Maps over the years have had over half a million total views!

Though just two of them — that Peninsula Hot Springs pizza one and the one from the helicopter flight over the 12 Apostles — have contributed to 200k of those views.

Over 500k views of my photos on Google Maps!

It’s cool of Google to keep sending update emails to their contributors that tell you how your contributions are performing and how they’re are helping other Maps users find what they're looking for. That’s gamification done well, and it certainly keeps me motivated to continue to share my local knowledge with them.

If you’re a regular user of Google Maps I recommend you sign up to be a local guide yourself. (I’m now a Level 6 local guide). What goes around comes around, as they say. And your contribution helps keep that wheel turning.

Importantly, data sets like these could do with more contributions from non-majority demographic city residents. So please review, rate, and share photos from non-mainstream places you love. That’s why, for example, I make sure to review every South Asian store and restaurant I go to in Melbourne.

And please don’t just contribute to closed, commercial data sets like Google Maps. Also contribute to open data sets like Open Street Map (where I’m also a contributor). That’s not as easy to do, I know, but the extra effort is worth it. Plus you learn a lot about map-making in the process — so that’s a win-win :)

Keyboard shortcut muscle memory

Ameel Khan March 3, 2019

There’s a lot to be said about muscle memory.

I subscribed to Google Play Music in July 2013 and have been using it almost exclusively to listen to all my music since then. The only time I use a local media player on my laptop is when I want to listen to a bunch of high resolution albums I have in FLAC, which isn’t all that often these days.

So it still surprises me, then, when I find myself using — without a second thought — all the important keyboard shortcuts in Winamp!

WinAmp interface showing the album being played is Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’.