Ok, so here it begins. The Berlin Blog. I did not expect it to take this long to get things started, but that is not the first or last time that has or will happen to me. Call it a hunch.One thing I was waiting for was my new digital camera. Which I finally received the second week of february. So once I got that I was ready to go - almost.
Of course there is the 16MB memory card rigamarole that, insanely, still exists. I guess it allows to to take a few (literally) photos, but come off it - you can (as I did) buy 128MB of memory for 3€ (by the way, for North American keyboards that is SHIFT + ALT + 2. Also interesting is that often it seems, in Germany at least, that they either do not use the Euro symbol at all, like here for example, or they actually write out EURO or EUR after the price (74 EURO) on receipts.)
Anyway, the 128MB card lets you take about 80 photos at 6MegaPixels. Which is basically three rolls of the old fashioned 24 exposure film. So, in other words, plenty. And if I can buy 128MB as a consumer for 3€, then I am guessing camera manufacturers could probably get it for themselves for less than a third of that price. Which means that they must actually have a specific REASON for not giving you more memory.
The reason could possibly be the obvious one - they want to also sell memory. However, not all camera manufacturers also manufacture memory. So this could only be a partial explanation. Also, it doesn't really fall under the GILLETTE RULES (which also encompass printers, of course: make an initial cheap product that then requires continual payment for continued use), since once you buy your 1GB memory card you don't really need to ever by another one. So what is it? I don't know. But it does seem slightly mean that when paying a couple of hundred dollars for a camera that they can't spend an extra dollar themselves just to give you a REASONABLE amount of memory. And truth be told, I think a lot of people would find that 128MB is actually plenty.
So post number one done. The rest will actually have some sort of relation to Berlin.
