The Box Saga Continues - We Delve Inside

Those of you who have delicate constitutions and elegant ears may want to leave - we are going to open the box containing the photographic equipment and there may be language.

Not every packaging designer wants you to get into the package. Some are jealous of the contents or the aesthetics or the zen or some damned thing and devise ways of excluding you. You don't just walk into Mordor...

If you get past the finger grip that is flush with the box side - I tend to favour a small knife blade to winkle this out - the first layer may be a portion of the box folded back upon itself to make a tray - containing the software CD and the instruction manual. Fair enough.

Fold this back and there are generally several wells holding goods wrapped within in clear plastic or bubble wrap. The bubble wrap is nice for protection but hell to repack anything into. The complex cardboard stamping that folds together to make the wells is evidence of the computer design skills of the Japanese designers as well as their peculiar facility with spatiality.

But they can go too far...some of the compact cameras have been packed into such complex structures as to defy first the unpacking - and you are not encouraged here to use a jemmy bar - and then any repacking. And some of the packaging is made by the firm that also makes razor wire. You can lose skin on the cardboard edges...

Okay, You have unpacked the camera or lens, seen it, hefted it, asked how much you get back from the TRS on it, tried it on with the sales assistant, and we are ready to repack it. Good luck. some of the goods fall back into the interior with ease and some have expanded so far beyond the original space as to defy us forever. I honestly think that they vacuum pack some cameras and as the air hits them they swell.

Do your best. If you have bought the goods you may just want to wrap it in your shirt or a handful of excelsior shavings. If you were just filling a lunch hour with idle enquiry and the sales assistant has to try to recover the situation they will...just beware of their eye next time you arrive with a sandwich and a cup of coffee and want to finger the lenses...

Uncle Dick