Why OS X is limited to FAT16

I tried to format an SD card for a camera with OS X and it seemed to be fine until the card was used in a camera. The camera can only read FAT32 partitions. 😟 Why is OS X limited to FAT partitions? Does Microsoft have control over FAT32? The limitations with FAT is a max of 4GB partitions. 😟 It's just inconvenient having to format SD and CF cards in the camera or within Windoze. Am I doing something wrong and there is actually a FAT32 partition within DIsk Utility? So far I haven't seen any evidence that the Disk Utility goes beyond FAT (FAT16).