Camera for a child?

[sojournerphoto]

In reply to Shawn's comment re instax I'd love to get one, but given it would be me funding materials I'm not sure the financial motivation would slow them down!

 

[shawn]

In reply to Shawn's comment re instax I'd love to get one, but given it would be me funding materials I'm not sure the financial motivation would slow them down!

Good point.

Watch ebay for Instax deals. Apparently, future brides buy them for reception photos (with tons of film), shoot a couple of packs and then don't touch them again. Eventually, they find their way onto ebay. Film is likely expired but IME still works.

I've bought two Instax Wide 210s with loads of film that way. The second one I bought came with 12 packs of film, whole thing was about $60 delivered.

Shawn

 

[sojournerphoto]

Good point.

Watch ebay for Instax deals. Apparently, future brides buy them for reception photos (with tons of film), shoot a couple of packs and then don't touch them again. Eventually, they find their way onto ebay. Film is likely expired but IME still works.

I've bought two Instax Wide 210s with loads of film that way. The second one I bought came with 12 packs of film, whole thing was about $60 delivered.

Shawn

Tip taken. That would be perfect.

Also, won the Fed🙂

 

[johnnyrod]

I plumped for digital as, like you say, they tend to shoot like Terminator. My daughter is now a little over 4, and has used the camera a fair few times. Nothing amazing, unsurprisingly, and the very short shutter lag is proving a great boon, but she does choose interesting subjects sometimes, and is starting to think about what could go into a picture. That and photographing all of creation. Reading between the lines can also be interesting; we went for a walk at Monsal Head in Derbyshire (UK) last year, and while up on an old railway bridge, she was trying to take pictures of the surrounding hills and so on. What it really meant was she was enjoying being there and was trying to capture what she saw, regardless of how well it turned out.

 

[rogue_designer]

I traded a lens for a Pentax K10D and kit lens, to give to my 5 year old boy. So far it works a treat. If he continues to show interest, he can grow into the camera more and learn manual exposure. Then I can teach him film.

 

[micromontenegro]

My eldest started (at 3) with a Rolleiflex. Her choice:



My youngest chose a F2 and a Pentax:



But he started getting results he liked with an ipad. Here's a selfie, edited by himself at 3 1/2 YO:



So, at least for him, the ipad was the useful tool.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

One of our daughers is same age with OP's. She is using same old P&S digital Fuji camera as my wife is using.
At this age they mostly want to use it because parents are doing it.
So, any camera which is good to focus and has five or more seconds review on the screen.
All they do is taking picture and looking right away on it and taking another picture and looking at it. Here is no intention to look at the pictures later, download on PC and so on. One of our older daughters was doing the same.

 

[Swift1]

When I started my daughter with when she was 5 I wanted something with Program AE but also manual advance and manual focus so she had to slow down and think more. For about $25 I found a Pentax P30T and an A series 50/2. She has made some cool photos with it.
She's 7 now, and last year I found her a nice Minolta Autocord.

Here's one of hers from the P30T

 

[johnnyrod]

Ko.Fe yep we have the same thing. She is currently a young 4 when learning is 50% fun (minimum) but things change so quickly, school starts in September. I've never asked her to take a good picture of something, just let her take whatever she wants, maybe that could be an interesting experiment. Right now, framing anything and not pressing any buttons (and getting lost in menus) is pretty much where we are. Actually not dissimilar from a great part of humanity! I stuck a small, thick sticker just below the flash and range sensor on the front as her fingers kept covering them up.

I don't really want there to start mucking about with effects and so on to be honest, at least not right now, otherwise getting any pictures would become secondary to electronic finger-painting, she can pick all that up later on. We're getting on to the philosophy of why we take pictures now! Yes she wants to copy me, but also to make memories, and she likes looking at pictures later. Maybe not all of the ones she took...

 

[johnnyrod]

It's been a couple of years now since I started this thread, my daughter is now a little over 6. She's used the Fuji F11 a fair few times, it's a good camera but there are a few limitations in this use. Focus, exposure and shutter lag are all good. I've had to jack up the screen brightness as often we use it on a sunny day while out, the downside is it is hard to really see the pictures, and they often look much worse than they really are. It needs a dedicated Fuji USB cable to transfer, so I am going to try to link it to an Android tablet and see if it is easy enough to copy the files over. This could be good, then she can review her own pictures. She still takes loads all the same, but actually getting to see them is a bit of a pain.
I was wondering about a camera with a viewfinder, but maybe it's not such a big deal at this age. Her composition isn't great (with good moments too) but she's showing more and more interest in it rather than just snapping away, and being able to look at her own pics will help. I think I'd have to go for something a lot newer or more complex to get Bluetooth or wifi transfer, and it may be no simpler than a cable anyway. This has always been a digital camera problem to me, I wanted to get my old dad a new camera but getting his films printed was so much easier than trying to navigate how to handle digital pictures.

 

[johnnyrod]

Minor update: the adapter arrived. Apparently USB OTG (on the go) has been a thing for some time now; basically a cable that inverts the gender and allows me to attach the USB plug not to my PC but to the micro-USB port of an Android tablet. File transfer would have been a bit tricky (devilish details) but I ended up uploading to Google Photos and it was okay. Works like an album pretty well. For reference, USB OTG is reliant on one of the devices being new enough, so last year's tablet is fine, and works with what is probably a 10 year old camera with no real bother.

 

[shawn]

I was wondering about a camera with a viewfinder, but maybe it's not such a big deal at this age. Her composition isn't great (with good moments too) but she's showing more and more interest in it rather than just snapping away, and being able to look at her own pics will help. I think I'd have to go for something a lot newer or more complex to get Bluetooth or wifi transfer, and it may be no simpler than a cable anyway. This has always been a digital camera problem to me, I wanted to get my old dad a new camera but getting his films printed was so much easier than trying to navigate how to handle digital pictures.

You can buy SD cards that have wifi built in. I don't have one but the Toshiba Air series is supposed to be pretty good and very easy to browse/transfer photos.

For a camera with a viewfinder a bunch of the older P/S camera had basic optical finders. EVFs have been around long enough that some P/S with them are getting pretty inexpensive.

Older DSLRs are also dirt cheap at this point. A D70 or D100 can be had for around $65 without a lens.

Shawn

 

[David Hughes]

And what's wrong with the new Zagato? Or did it prompt all this reopening of an old thread?

Regards, David

 

[johnnyrod]

David - I don't understand. I though I'd post an update.

Shawn - That's something else I've never heard of! and to be honest wouldn't even think would exist. The Fuji takes an XD card though, which I'm led to believe was a bit of a dead end. Worth knowing for the future though. DSLRs are a bit big, at least for now, give it a few years yet - not to mention the potential extra complexity.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Shawn - That's something else I've never heard of! and to be honest wouldn't even think would exist. The Fuji takes an XD card though, which I'm led to believe was a bit of a dead end. Worth knowing for the future though. DSLRs are a bit big, at least for now, give it a few years yet - not to mention the potential extra complexity.

XD cards were a joint project between Olympus and Fuji. An attempt to force people to buy memory cards from them if they used their cameras. Like Sony and the Memory Stick. They finally came to their senses and dropped the XD card years ago.

 

[ptpdprinter]

And what's wrong with the new Zagato?

I think the question to ask is not what is wrong with it, but what, if any, improvement, do you get for the $14,000 premium. I think the rounded front grip could be considered an improvement, though unacceptable to the classicist. But mostly it is about bling.

 

[EarlJam]

I've been running through this argument for my grandchildren. Thinking back to my childhood, the common "first camera" was a Kodak 127 box camera of some sort: fixed lens, one or two apertures, in short, a limited set of variables.

For times when we're out shooting film, I found an Olympus Infinity Jr meets the general criteria and is a good size for little hands. Digital cameras have proven harder to nail down, since one of my goals is to teach the kids to use cameras with eye-level viewfinders so they're ready to inherit the small collection of film cameras when they're older.

I finally settled on a first-generation Fuji X100. Controls can be locked down pretty well and, as my grandson says, "It's like your camera", meaning the Leica that's been in his face since birth. Thus far, he likes using the camera and is comfortable with it, and is getting good results.

 

[johnnyrod]

Chris - thanks, at 5mp the small one in the camera is both big enough for a day trip and limits pointless shooting
David - I get it now!
Earl - I'm going to stick with digital I think, I'm a bit of a purist and shoot film but a 6 year old has a short attention span and also the ability to experiment, whether on the screen before taking the picture (backlighting, maybe AF lock) or by taking several and reviewing, is good for a learner. I do think a proper VF is the way to go in the end, and with a longer lens with its shallower DoF then things like aperture start to make more sense. Fuji may be a bit pricey for even me for now though! Such a shame you can't convert the old film cameras to digital, so many good ones for peanuts. I doubt a piece of technology like that would have passed me by!

 

[Bill Clark]

We gave our grand daughters our old iPhones. No service.

But they use them for making photos and store them on the phone. Wi-Fi works so email and messaging works. Just no cell service.

 

[David Hughes]

An old smart phone for a youngster is a good idea as that seems to be the way everything (except RF's and SLR's) is going.

Because of age differences, our grandchildren give us their old phones. For "old" read "last year's"...

Regards, David