The Online Photographer

tl;dr: It's all good until I get to the software. Same with cameras.

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This has been a very entertaining three or four weeks. I've been engaged in an intense flurry of research, which, for the most part, I enjoy. I noticed that as it progressed, it tended to evolve to ever-increasing levels of granularity. Sorta like this:

• Global view of solar energy adoption and alternative energy progress;
• Narrowing down to passenger vehicles;
• Narrowing to hybrid and full electric cars in general vs. ICE cars;
• Narrowing to the idea that my own next car should probably be a hybrid or full electric car;
• Deep dive into make-and-model searches, and the (difficult, in fact nearly insuperable) problem of aligning to my budget;
• Along the way, researching public and home charging, and home chargers (EVSEs);
• Arriving at the idea of an older, used Nissan Leaf simply because it's cheap (there's a whole story there I haven't related at all yet);
• Thence, adventitiously, to the Nissan Ariya, which I had never heard of and which had not been on my radar screen at all; 
• Sensing the opportunity there and seizing it; 
• Focusing on all the research I had to do on the particular car I was buying and navigating the purchase process, along the way investigating all the various incentives, the warranty, the loan terms, insurance increases, etc.;
• Taking delivery of the car and learning the basic controls; 
• And finally, beginning to explore and sort out the hugely complexified welter of software capabilities and complications in the car, which is where I am now. (See the very end of this post for a little good news.)

So what started with a hopeful and optimistic article about worldwide solar power adoption (really, it's good—you should read it if you happen to live at Earth) ended up with me trying to figure out what an unmarked little button at the end of the lightstalk does, in a car I had never heard of when I read the article. (It turns on auto-dimming of the high beams. Works pretty well, too, although it's fooled by oncoming streetlamps.)

To give you an idea of just how granular my research became, I'll just give you two little examples. These should stand for all the rest.

1.

First, as you might know, Tesla recently (well, November 2022) decided to share its formerly proprietary connector plug architecture with the rest of the world, opening its excellent Supercharger network to whoever wanted to use it. They renamed it NACS, North American Charging Standard. And one hopes that one day it will be, because there should be such a thing. And a kind reader (thanks, John K.) offered to send me a surplus NACS-to-J1772 adapter he happened to have. So as I was researching whether it would work for me, I uncovered an odd little situation. Turns out that many adapters have a little pin that depresses when you plug them into J1772 charging ports in cars, and this helps tell the charger that the connector is properly seated. But these won't work on the Nissan Ariya specifically, and here's why: 

This is the J1772 port on my car. Those two big lower pins are for DC Fast Charging. See that hourglass shape between the two? It's hollow on the Ariya. In almost every other car, it's solid. And that's where the adapter's pin happens to want to hit. So Nissan supplies its own adapter as a "kit." What makes it a kit? Well, here's a picture of it: 

That's a standard Tesla adapter, nothing special (or Nissan-y) about it. See that itty-bitty plastic piece next to it? That's the "Inlet Gap Plug," a little bit of plastic that press-fits into the top of the hollow hourglass shape, thus giving the pin on the adapter something to press up against when the connector is seated. Probably costs 11¢ to manufacture; I scored mine for $11 and change, woo-hoo.

It took me a long time to figure that out. 

2.

Second issue: Is the Chinese-made Lenz EVSE I bought for $289 the same as the allegedly Canadian-made Grizzl-E Classic 40A that costs $379? (I got a 40-amp charger because my car will only accept 32-amp charging, so a 40-amp circuit is enough). I got into the weeds on that. Here's the picture I finally found. I can't see them well enough to know for sure whether they're fabricated in the same electronics factory or whether one is a knockoff of the other. But they seem essentially identical in any case. I decided to take the chance, and ordered the Lenz. 

Turn the wipers off right now or else
This is just the sort of thing we have to do with photography. You start off thinking about great photographers you admire and want to emulate, grand ambitious projects, and what style of pictures turn you on. Much later, you find yourself trying to figure out whether a particular off-brand lens has more decentering than it should, or how, exactly, eye-focus works in your camera in certain tricky situations like shooting through foliage, or whether your camera happens to have a particular sensor that heats up too much and starts to show banding. You begin with grand plans. Then you find yourself reading through Amazon reviews at 2:00 in the morning or researching rumor sites about whether something you're waiting for is coming out next month or not. 

...And, unfortunately, in the same way that all roads lead to Rome, you usually end up, with either cars or cameras, lost, or adrift, or wandering, in that modern bane of all our existences...software. Software! Newman! I'm a reasonably clever dude, and I have lots of aptitudes that happen to intersect in useful ways with what I've wanted to do over the years, whether professionally or for fun. And, as you've seen many times, even before I shared with you the esoteric secret of the Inlet Gap Plug (and yes you're welcome for that), I can be a quick study when it comes to new subjects. But my eyes glaze over when it comes to software. I don't have that knack, alas. I don't have the patience. I don't have the gene, or whatever it is that makes some people good with that sort of thing. It must delight them. But they are wired differently from me. I would say they have strange brains, except I'm pretty sure it's me who has the strange brain, not them. In any event I do not enjoy software like everyone else seems to. I am averse to it. I'm going to spare you my old-fart diatribe against newfangled modern ways only because you've heard it all before, but let me just enumerate the essential problem of software, whether on an electric car or a digital camera:

1. There is one thing you need to do.
2. For flexibility and customization, you can be given three choices as to how the control is implemented.
3. Then the software engineers figure out six more choices. Choice is good, right? Pack it in.
4. But then the software engineers, who do not, and cannot, and will never understand that the goal of software should be to make life simpler, decide there are several different ways to do each of those nine things, so they give you all of them. You now have nine choices to make in order to do each of the nine ways to do the one thing. (I'm getting confused trying to describe it, but that's precisely appropriate.) Then a completely separate control is seen to have an influence on the one thing you are trying to control, so further obfuscation in the instruction manual becomes necessary. Warnings might have to be issued (there must be 900 little grayed-out boxes in the Ariya owner's manual with the header WARNING! at the top). So for instance on the Ariya, there might be 147 ways (I exaggerate, but not much) to influence the setting of the regenerative braking, many of which are identical but set in different ways, in different areas of the menus (you can set it here, or you can set it here, or you can...) with the caveat that, alas, alack, not one of those ways is true one-pedal driving, something I firmly believe every single all-electric car ought to have.

In almost all cases you end up in exactly the same place. Here it is. The car wash has grabbed on to your tire and you're committed and can't back out, and the auto-sensing windshield-wiper function has turned your wipers on, and you have no idea how to turn them off, but it's somewhere in the menus, and you have four seconds to figure it out because that giant spinning roller of thousands of wet, soapy streamers is headed right toward your delicate wipers and is about to destroy them; or, the bride is just about to cut the cake, and for no apparent reason whatsoever your camera has switched to JPEG-only with a cross-processing creative filter and a two-second tripod timer delay, and you have no idea a.) what you did to tell it to do that or b.) how to reverse the command input in the two seconds before the bride's cake server hits the icing and that crucial and essential moment that you must capture is lost for all time.

Software in a nutshell. At least to my strange brain. 

Anyway, that's where I am now. On the good side, it took me 24 hours to learn how to set the cruise control, but I got it. So that's one in the win column, so far.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

William Lloyd: "Well, once again while reading your post, I find myself occupying briefly the same space and time in the continuum as you. You and I, it seems, are that type of people who walk into a store or showroom and are disappointed to find (again!) that we know much more, oh so much more, than the hapless salesperson who has latched on to us at our approach. I would admit, for me 90% of the fun of executing a significant purchase is in that long buildup of gathering information and making the final choice. For alas, after the purchase, all too often the next cycle to begin is the reconsideration, and minor points of vexation uncovered, in what was too briefly a very satisfying quest for the next Holy Grail."

Dave Karp: "Re ...The bride is just about to cut the cake, and for no apparent reason whatsoever your camera has switched to JPEG-only with a cross-processing creative filter and a two-second tripod timer delay, and you have no idea...." That, right there, have me a shot of anxiety and I don't shoot weddings! Just spot on. For what it's worth, I have had the Grizzl-E at home to charge my Honda Clarity PHEV since 2019 and it has worked great. I hope you get the same reliability with your Lenz."

wilma: "Have you seen a doctor about this?  ;-) "

Mike replies: Well, not this specifically but....  :-)

MikeR: "Reminds me of my brother-in-law and I sitting in a rental Nissan something-or-other in a hotel parking lot for five minutes trying to get the car into reverse. (There's an obscure unmarked button that looks like decorative trim on the shifter lever that needs to be held down.)"

Kye Wood: "Former experienced software developer here (one of many careers). The only humans who make interactions with computers better are UX/UI Designers. You'll never be allowed to work in that field if you've ever done coding. Party because coders fixate on How will I implement this? UX/UI people focus on What's the simplest concept that lets me get this done? In short, coders call you a User. Designers call you a Person. And every banking website, phone, car information system, operating system, computer program...all treat you as if you have nothing better to do than learn another way of doing the same thing. And why. To keep you locked in! You could try something new but the cognitive burden of relearning yet one more needlessly different thing will keep you bound to the god-awful original product. I FEEL YOUR PAIN. LIKE YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE."

Robert Roaldi: "Re 'adventitiously,' thanks for that. You'd think these things would all be appliances by now. Instead, even appliances have taken the 'complexification' pill. I worked in software development from about 1977 to 2002. Everyone I worked with in the field ended up hating the work for many reasons, including the ones you describe. I use an iMac and have been doing three things with my home computers for about 25 years: surfing, email, and editing photos. I have ignored every other feature that has been introduced in that time, except for when they've actually interfered with that I want to do. And I'm no Luddite. As for phones, both home and mobile, if I didn't have to worry about calling 911 or a tow truck, I'd take a hammer to all of them."

Gary: "Thank you for describing your frustrations and confirming why I won't buy an EV."

Mike replies: Tell you what, though, Gary—you should definitely test drive a couple of them just for the experience and to add to your store of general automotive knowledge. Quite an eye-opener for me. Stick to good ones—I'd recommend trying the Ford Mustang Mach-E and/or the Hyundai Ioniq 5 or 6 or the Kia equivalent, the EV6. Everybody ought to experience what they're like, even if they have no intention of ever buying one. Silent, with gobs of torque, ultra-smooth continuous acceleration, one-pedal driving, a feeling of effortlessness...they're pretty wonderful just as cars. I presented myself at the Ford dealer by saying upfront that I was merely curious and wasn't in the market, so you won't be taking advantage of them as long as you're honest. 

Jayanand Govindaraj: "Software requires effort to master—which is why I have no intention of moving away from, say, the Adobe ecosystem, which I have been using for over 20 years now, or Windows which has been part of my life for far longer! By the way, the 'software' equivalent (i.e. the engineering) in a fossil-fuel-based vehicle is totally undecipherable by the average user, a comprehensive and total black box, and specialists (i.e. mechanics) are required to even so much as to open the hood and gingerly touch the engine  :-) . Give me the modern innards of vehicles any day, where we, as the user, have a certain modicum of control to fine-tune certain settings to our own specific needs."

Mike replies: Points taken. For example, I totally love the cruise control implementation in the Ariya, and I only had to learn it once. I'll use it all the time, as it's the way I keep myself from speeding. Who cares if it was 20 hours before I figured it out instead of 20 minutes? Doesn't matter in the long run.

Critical to my ultimate happiness is going to be persistence...I need to keep learning all the settings and not give up halfway through the process. Comfort comes with familiarity. Back on topic, I usually start with cameras by making a list of the things I want to accomplish with the settings, to match my preferences and needs in shooting. Then I have goals to guide my learning of the software. I find that helps a lot. 

Nick: "I'm a Ph.D. physical scientist who's had 30+ years of professional experience (and 45+ years of personal experience, starting at age five) in learning, using, and (occasionally) coding software. I'm actually quite good at picking my way through new software by guesswork, which is handy when I am faced with the software for a new scientific instrument. For those who haven't used such things, the general rule is that said packages make Photoshop look shallow and intuitive while also being more unstable than the beta build of an indie computer game; if you think about how bad software is when written for a consumer base of many millions, ponder how bad it can be when the resources devoted to it are appropriate for an installed base of <1,000 (sometimes <10) users.

"All that said, I address new software the same way, regardless of platform: I start like you do, with knowing exactly what I want it to do, then figure out how to do just that. Once I get there, I'll sometimes decide to pick through the rest of the options to see if they do anything interesting that I hadn't thought about doing.

"Most of my experiences, though, are much like what happened when I got my first Olympus Micro 4/3 about 15 years ago: I figured out how to get the camera set up just like I wanted for ordinary shooting. Then, I spent several hours poking through every menu option in its labyrinthine interface to figure out what they all do and why someone might want to use them. As a final step, I left the camera set up in just the same way as I did from the beginning and never touched any of the other menu options again. I'm on my sixth Olympus, and the only thing that's really changed is to which interface device (knob, dial, button, whatever), exactly, each of the most basic controls has been mapped."

jim: "You have left out the issue, at least for me, of finally figuring out how to conquer the software, then forgetting that by the next time you need it! Or losing the piece of paper you wrote it down on!"

Mike replies: I just did that last night. Could not figure out how to dim the instrument cluster. Until I finally remembered it was something I had learned on the first day with the salesman. Two little buttons hidden out of sight on the left of the instrument cluster pod.