Random tangent (blog)
Ameel Khan's personal blog. This is a blog about life, technology, photography, typography, the internet, science, feminism, books, film, music, and whatever other random stuff I come across or happen to be interested in today.
I took this photo several months ago. And when I did, I turned it into a fake album cover.
I figured I’d re-edit it without the text to see what it would look like. It came out okay, I think.
High contrast black and white photo of people walking through a pedestrian underpass at a train station.
It’s time for of our annual Australian Open selfie :)
Selfie of a man and a woman in a tennis court. They are both wearing wide-brimmed straw hats, face masks, and black t-shirts. They have bright blue lanyards around their necks.
Here are some other nice photos I took at the Australian Open this year.
Though this one is probably my favourite :)
Black and white photo of a child watching a tennis match. The child is leaning back in his chair and has his feet up against the railing in front of him.
My favourite type of photography is street photography. And, thanks to the excellent weather we’ve been having in Melbourne, I spent the last couple of days walking around the city taking photos with my new camera.
You can see all my Melbourne photos in the (appropriately titled) ‘Life in Melbourne’ album on Flickr. And you can see all my street photography photos in the ‘Out and about in the city’ album.
But here are a couple of my recent favourites.
Black and white photo of a large, old truck cab with the brand ‘international’ in all capital letters affixed across the front grill.
Maggie waits for Nadia to come up the stairs.
Low angle photo taken from behind a red/brown dog crouched in anticipation at the top of a staircase in a carpeted house. The dog, who is facing away from the photographer, has its ears pricked and looks ready to jump up in an instant.
Here are some photos I’ve taken with my new camera. They’re nothing particularly exciting, but taking them has given me a chance to play around with the camera and its settings.
Walking by platform 1 on a sunny day:
Photo of a suburban train station platform taken from the level of the platform floor. Across from the track are are row of tall trees. A sign on the platform tells you this is platform 1 at Gowrie Railway Station.
Pair of pushy seagulls at Federation Square:
Photo of two seagulls, walking forward side-by-side, eyeing something off camera.
Watching a movie at Federation Square:
Photo of two people sitting in foldable deck chairs watching a movie being shown on a large screen in a public square. Behind the funky, off-angle building on which the screen is mounted you can see the tall buildings of the city centre.
Letting the world pass them by:
Black and white photo of a couple taken through a gap in the trees. The couple are sitting on a park bench facing a river, while a cyclist crosses the walking/cycling path behind them.
Whoever lives here is all set for summer in Melbourne.
One of our neighbours is having a barbecue.
Photo of a red/brown dog standing in a residential garden with her nose up, sniffing the air.
It’s a Fujifilm X-S10 and it’s really cool.
Face-on photo of a Fujifilm X-S10 camera.
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…
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).
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.
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.
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).
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”.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
For all its features and capabilities, the Fujifilm X-S10 also has a few limitations.
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.
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 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’.
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.
I thought this was a nice, shady spot for a 1 Jan 2023 selfie…
Selfie of a man wearing a t-shirt, sunglasses, and straw hat walking a red/brown dog on a residential street. The dog is sniffing around in the grass of the nature strip.
Evidently she thought this was a nice, grassy spot where she could scratch her back :)
Selfie of a man wearing a t-shirt, sunglasses, and straw hat walking a red/brown dog on a residential street. The dog next to him is upside down and is rubbing her back on the tall, scratchy grass that's on the nature strip.
Win-win!
After almost six years of not publishing anything on Flickr, I am now back on that platform.
Why? Because it’s nice to have a presence on a platform that lets you publish a public photo stream. (Unlike Instagram, which I wrote about a few months ago.)
It’s not just that though. Flickr lets you organise your photos into albums and publishes the EXIF metadata of the photos you have uploaded. You can also tag your photos, add them to public galleries, favourite other people’s photos, and even sell your photos.
Basically, it’s a great place to share your photos — and it works well for both amateur and professional photographers alike.
I’ve now spent the last few days uploading five years’ worth of ‘missing’ photos to my Flickr profile. These are the photos I originally posted only to various social media channels or to this blog.
Now there is no gap between when I stopped publishing photos to Flickr back in 2017 and when I’ve resumed publishing there now (in December 2022).
If you’re someone who follows me on Flickr, I apologise for all the photo spam! Fortunately, that’s all done now.
Diagram showing four timelines. The one on top is labeled ‘Flickr’ and is in two parts. Its first part starts on 2 Mar 2007 and ends on 7 May 2017. Its second part, which is shaded in orange, starts from 30 Dec 2022 and continues to present day. The two middle timelines are labelled ‘Instagram only’ (2017-2019) and ‘Instagram’ (8 Nov 2012 to 9 Apr 2019). The bottom timeline is labelled ‘Random tangent blog’ (1 Jan 2019 to now) and this is also coloured orange.
Going forward I will post all my photos to this blog as well as to Flickr.
And, while you’re welcome to scroll back through this blog to see all the photos I’ve shared over the years, it’ll probably be easier to see them all in one place on Flickr :)
Maggie doesn’t like having her photo taken, so some of the best photos we get of her is when she’s asleep :)
So here she is sleeping on our bed.
Sleeping on her mat (in my study).
And sleeping in her own bed (in our living room).
I didn’t think I’d ever have a favourite mailbox. Turns out I do, and it’s this one :)
Photo of a wooden residential mailbox installed atop a small mound of dirt in the front garden of a house. The entire mound of dirt is covered with pink coloured flowers.
This house in our neighbourhood has no other Christmas decorations, just this nativity scene. Which I think is pretty cool, given the whole understated, born-in-a-barn origin story they’re representing.
Photo of a small Christmas nativity scene created using ceramic figurines that’s been set up in a residential garden.
Maggie is not happy that summer holidays have started in Melbourne. She relies on the kids from the nearby primary school to provide her with dropped snacks on her daily walk!
Photo of a red/brown dog sniffing intently at a spot in the grass on a nature strip by the side of a residential street. The dog is wearing a walking harness that’s attached to a red leash.
Waiting for a train at Yarraville Station in Melbourne, Australia.
Photo of an empty outdoor train platform, taken with the camera placed very close to the ground. The platform extends into the distance, and the bit of pavement the camera has been placed on shows cracks from years of use in the hot Australian summer. Across the train tracks you can see an out-of-focus train station build on the other platform.
Top-down photo of the edge of a railway platform, with the top half of the photo showing one of the train tracks and the bottom half showing the thick white line that marks the edge of the platform. The photographer’s white sneakers and the cuffs of his jeans are visible at the very bottom of the photo, with the front part of his sneakers on top of the white line. The edge of the platform and white paint on it is cracked and peeled from years of use under the hot Australian sun.
This is probably the coolest car hood that I have ever seen in my entire life!
Photo of the hood of an older Volvo car parked just off the street on a sunny day. The hood of the silver car has been hand painted to show an artistic depiction of a scene from the film ‘Alice in Wonderland’. The scene shows the yellow brick road making its way through some greenery. On the road are Alice, her dog Toto, and the Tin Man. The Tin Man is shown in the foreground, and he is holding a small hatchet. Toto is in the background and next to him we can see only Alice’s feet and lower legs under her blue, patterned skirt.
For the first couple of hours of the day Maggie hangs out with Nadia because Nadia gives her breakfast.
Then for the next couple of hours she hangs out with me because I take her for her daily walk.
This is Maggie making sure I know that she is ready to go the instant I step away from my home office desk this morning :)
Photo of a red/brown dog lying on a carpeted floor with her face right next to the caster of an office chair. The photographer has taken the photo while sitting on that office chair, looking straight down onto the dog.
We’re about to go for a walk — which Maggie is super excited about — but then she heard Nadia opening the cheese drawer in the fridge :)
Photo of a red/brown dog standing in a residential hallway. The dog is wearing a walking harness attached to a red leash that’s been stretched tight in front of the photographer because the dog is pulling towards the back of the house.
Every time we move house my first blog post is always an update on what the NBN internet speeds are at our new place. This time is no exception.
What is different this time is that, instead of renting, we’ve now bought a house in Melbourne’s northern suburbs. (Yay!)
Compared to our last place, the upload and download speeds at our new house are around 3% faster – which is cool.
A graphic titled ‘2022 NBN update: speeds up 3%’. The graphic shows two sets of bar charts, one with a heading of ‘average download speeds’ and the other with a heading of ‘average upload speeds’ — both showing download/upload speeds in megabits per second, or Mbps.
There are six bars in each chart, one each for the years 2009, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022. Both download and upload bars increase dramatically in size from 2009 (when the internet connection types was ADSL) to 2015 (when the internet connection type was FTTB).
The bars were highest in 2018, with 105.2 Mbps download speeds and 37.2 Mbps upload speeds in Kingsville. The connection type in this location was FTTP. In 2022 the bars show 94.7 Mbps download speeds and 18.9 Mbps upload speeds in Melbourne’s north. The connection type in this location is FTTC.
Our NBN connection type is still FTTC though. But that’s okay, the speeds we’re currently getting are sufficient for our needs.
There’s just two of us here, so Nadia and I can stream multiple 4K videos simultaneously without a hitch. And both of us can seamlessly participate in 1080p video conferences at the same time as well.
Of course, the second NBN Co give us the opportunity to upgrade our connection to FTTP, we’ll jump on that straight away :)
For now, though, I’m super happy with what we’ve got.
Hark!
Photo of a red/brown dog in a large park. The dog is wearing a walking harness and is looking intently at something off camera.
This is personal website of Nadia Niaz and Ameel Zia Khan. Here we document our lives in Melbourne, Australia.
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
