Posted by George Hager on March 2, 2009 at 2:18 PM
Got my wife a little Canon 8 Meg point and shoot not long ago. I didn’t pay much attention to the included memory card as they are usually on the small side. Just stuck in a card we already had. A couple of days ago I was throwing out the packaging when I noticed the card. It had a big “16” printed on it. For a second, I thought – man I must have been wrong. They included a 16 gig card. Nope, I was right. The card was 16 megs. That means with the factory supplied memory card you could take one full sized image and then the camera reads out of memory. Kind of like buying a new car and having the dealer put a half a cup of gas in it. Makes me wonder if Canon has been secretly hiring some of our banking industry and General Motor execs away from us.
George, if you set it on small JPEG, you'll have plenty of capacity!
I thought they had stopped including memory cards. The last P&S (Sony and Canon) cameras that I purchased for the kids didn't have one.
Those small capacities appear to serve no purpose - other than aggravate customers!
They should just reduce the purchase price by $0.50 instead.
Posted by Brent Murphy on March 2, 2009 at 6:38 PM
Personally, I think it makes sense, actually. They want to make sure you can take pictures "out of the box". They don't want you to get home, open the box, then find out you need to go back to the store to pick up a memory card. And why bump up the price by including something like a 1GB card, when you'll probably go out and buy a 4GB card anyway. They're just throwing money away by putting any kind of card in there, so they'll throw in something cheap, just to make sure it works out of the box.
Of course, the ancient P&S I bought almost 6 years ago came with a 16MB card, which I immediately upgraded. Surprising anyone is actually still making cards that small.
It can't possibly be so much more expensive to include a 1-gig card (or even half that!) and thus spare their customers some pain and anguish, but that would be too obvious.
My Lumix didn't include a memory card, so I'd guess these mini cards are on the way out. It is kinda strange to include a card like that
That's right Mel, because it's a real mans camera
They call the LX3 an 'enthusiasts' camera, which essentially puts in a class by its own...
Posted by Scott Borger on March 2, 2009 at 9:41 PM
That's like leaving a penny as a tip or getting a $10 Christmas bonus. Better to leave/give nothing at all than to insult (unless that is your intention I suppose).
Posted by Mel Ladewig on March 2, 2009 at 10:05 PM
They probably have to go out of their way and pay extra for the 16MB card since those are so far out of the norm for production these days. And since Canon isn't really in the memory card business, it doesn't make sense for them to get mixed up in that. Its not like its a product intro. They should strike a deal with Sandisk or Lexar or Kingston for some 1GB cards to include for free (like the crack dealer with his free samples).
I would guess that the card was not put in your package by Canon, but was put in
there by the retailer. Cheating on the memory card is a trick commonly used by
certain retailers. I would bet that the card that Canon put in the package was larger.
Check out your camera model at the canonusa.com site to see what should have
been included.
Discussion
9 repliesI thought they had stopped including memory cards. The last P&S (Sony and Canon) cameras that I purchased for the kids didn't have one.
Those small capacities appear to serve no purpose - other than aggravate customers!
They should just reduce the purchase price by $0.50 instead.
Of course, the ancient P&S I bought almost 6 years ago came with a 16MB card, which I immediately upgraded. Surprising anyone is actually still making cards that small.
That's right Mel, because it's a real mans camera
They call the LX3 an 'enthusiasts' camera, which essentially puts in a class by its own...
there by the retailer. Cheating on the memory card is a trick commonly used by
certain retailers. I would bet that the card that Canon put in the package was larger.
Check out your camera model at the canonusa.com site to see what should have
been included.