My wife and I have two daughters of three and five years old. They use our Canon Powershot camera for taking pictures of their feet, our legs and back, the garbage bin, etc. Some pictures are really nice, but most of them we have to delete. So, maybe its time to buy a digital camera for kids.
Criteria digital camera for kids
In my opinion a digital camera for kids should meet the following criteria:
- Easy to use; big buttons and a simple menu. The controls should be simple for kids to understand – no reading required.
- Not too big; kids have small hands.
- Preferably dual handgrips for a steady shot.
- Tough construction. The camera will suffer a lot of wear and tear, so buy a camera that will last.
- Good image quality; at least 2 to 3 megapixels giving enough freedom to crop and print images.
- A proper lens.
- A LCD screen at least 1.3 inch in size.
- The possibility to zoom and capture video.
- A memory slot for adding extra memory.
- Attractive looking. Our kids like a camera having flashy colors and printed with their favorite (cartoon)star. Buy a camera that the kids like and not a camera that you would like.
- Under $100. When its broke, you don’t have to spend a lot of money to buy a new one.
- Auto everything; auto flash, auto focus, auto lens cover.
- Find the latest version of any camera.
- A wrist strap.
Keeping above criteria in my mind I started searching for websites selling digital cameras for kids. I noticed that there are a lot of different types of kids cameras.
Most popular digital camera for kids
The most popular kids cameras are:
- Fisher Price Kid-Tough Camera
- VTech Kidizoom Camera
- Polaroid Pixie Camera
- Disney Pix Jr, Disney Pix Click, Disney Pix Micro, and Disney Pix Max Camera
- Nickelodeon Dora The Explorer and Go Diego Go Camera
- My Real Digital Camera from Little Tikes
- Hello Kitty 3.2 MP Camera
- Barbie Camera
However, most of these digital cameras for kids do not meet the most important criteria. Quite a few camera buyers (mostly parents) complained in user reviews about low image quality, small LCD screens and poor in low light conditions. Despite these complaints other buyers (and their kids) of the same camera were completely happy with their purchase. The answer for this discrepancy has to do with the age of the kids. For young children image quality and LCD screen size is of less importance, as long as they can take pictures and move on. Older children, however, like to view, crop and print their pictures which makes a camera with at least 2 to 3 megapixels a must.
Kids camera or adult camera?
A few online shops offer simple and under $100 “made for adult” compact cameras which are also suitable for kids, such as the Kodak EasyShare C613 and C713, Argus Bean 5MP, and the VistaQuest VQ5115. Most of these digital cameras for “adults” have at least 5 megapixels, auto-focus, zoom, video and expandable memory. However, adult cameras are more suitable for kids from 7 years old, because these cameras tend to have smaller buttons and more complicated menus, and are more fragile than the “made for kids” cameras.
Please do not hesitate to leave a comment, if you have additional criteria or having good or bad experiences with digital cameras for kids.
In the next posts, I will discuss and review the most popular digital cameras for kids, starting with the Fisher Price Kid Tough Camera.
Tags: kids camera
September 27th, 2008 at 6:33 am
Interesting article. I need to read it again in order to digest all the information correctly!