Amazon.com had a sale going on digital cameras that ended this week. They replaced that promotion with a new one– if you buy a digital camera from them, you get a free 64-Megabyte memory card that’s compatible with the camera or you get a discount on a larger-capacity memory card. The biggest restriction on this offer is that you have to buy the camera from Amazon.com itself, not a third party selling on their site.
If you go to the free memory card offer page, you’ll see links on the right to different types of memory cards that are available. Clicking on each of those links brings up a list of compatible cameras. This turns digital camera shopping on its head– normally I find a camera I want, then figure out what memory card format it supports. You can also find the camera you want and see the memory card offer down toward the bottom of the page.
I’ve been watching the Canon Powershot A95, waiting for the right moment to buy it. (This is driven by credit card billing cycles more than anything else). The price went up about $19 since the last time I looked, but I get a 64M Compact Flash Card or a $24.99 credit toward another memory card if I buy now. I think the deal is better for me now, since I would need a large memory card to go with the camera.
Just to make things a bit more interesting, Amazon offers different credit amounts for different memory card formats. I guess we could break down which type of camera would be most economical based on the net price of the larger memory cards. I started to do that and the difference is only a couple of dollars here or there, so I recommend that you skip that exercise unless you are a real savings geek.
This promotion runs until January 4, 2005, so people buying gifts for themselves after the holidays will be able to reap the benefits as well.