My XL1s came with a manual in English French and Spanish. The menu's on the camera are in English. Does this mean the camera is a grey market? The camera was advertised with US warranty, so I don't think it is, but are all the manuals in the US box trilingual?

My GL2 manual is in English, French and Spanish as well and mine is not a grey market one. The menu's are in English as well. I think that grey market one's come with foreign language menus and the body of the camera may actually be a grey color, not entirely sure about that though.

Cheers,
Huey

Brian,

Yes, the XL1s comes with a trilingual manual... printed in Japan!

LOL... now I'm confused.... the manual being printed in japan, doesn't mean anything about the warranty though right, lol? I'm sure the canon XL1s itself, isn't made in the US... its just made for the US, or not.

Don't be confused. Be assured. Just because your manual is trilingual doesn't mean you have a gray market item.

Read the separate warranty card that comes with the camera. It will say US Warranty if indeed the camera is a US warranty item.

::scrambles to look for that, having never seen it::

I found 2 little card/pamphlets that say "Canon limited warranty/garantie limitee"

On them, they say "warranty coverage is subject to the country where the unit was purchased."

Theres no actual mention of the US in this area, but I bought it in the US. Also, when you open it up, it has a warranty for Canada, and Warranty for US details. I'm guessing this is probably it.

Call the Canon help desk at their 800 number, ask them . They should be able to map the serial number to a valid UYSA import. They also should be able to tell you if the place you bought it is an authorized dealer.

Tri-lingual manuals work for North America where NTSC and English, Spanish and French are the primary languages

That sounds like the warranty card to me. I'd still follow Don's advice.

Don Palomaki has summed it up succinctly... tri-lingual manuals work for North America where the video standard is NTSC and English, Spanish and French are the primary languages. Spanish for Mexico, English for the U.S. and parts of Canada, French for the other parts of Canada. Most all consumer electronics (and just about any consumer product requiring a user's manual, such as a washing machine) are printed in those three primary North American languages if they're shipped to the North American market. Hope this helps,

Thanks, everyone.

Brian,
I'm not sure about this, but I've heard that the grey market cameras mostly have the "in Viewfinder" information in a different language, and they aren't warranteeable in US. But i've never heard they were some inferior reject camera. Just based for a different culture. Same camera, different lingo.
Russ