Your Out-of-Box Experience

Your Sony Alpha comes in an impressive box filled with stuff, including connecting cords, booklets, a CD, and lots of paperwork. The most important components are the camera and lens, battery, battery charger, and, if you’re the nervous type, the neck strap. You’ll also need a Secure Digital or Memory Stick card, as one is not included. If you purchased your Alpha from a camera shop, as I did, the store personnel probably attached the neck strap for you, ran through some basic operational advice that you’ve already forgotten, tried to sell you a Secure Digital card, and then, after they’d given you all the help you could absorb, sent you on your way with a handshake.

Perhaps you purchased your Sony Alpha from one of those mass merchandisers that also sell washing machines and vacuum cleaners. In that case, you might have been sent on your way with only the handshake, or, maybe, not even that if you resisted the efforts to sell you an extended warranty. You save a few bucks at the big-box stores, but you don’t get the personal service a professional photo retailer provides. It’s your choice. There’s a third alternative, of course. You might have purchased your camera from a mail order or Internet source, and your camera arrived in a big brown (or purple/red) truck. Your only interaction when you took possession of your camera was to scrawl your signature on an electronic clipboard.