Best Kid Tough Digital Camera
Do you have an aspiring young photographer in your family? You might want to think about investing in a kid tough digital camera specifically for your child. This is becoming a hot market for a lot of the big manufacturers of digital cameras. Young children are becoming more tech-savvy, and they want their own versions of adult devices like digital cameras. Mom and Dad’s digital camera is probably a little delicate for kid use, since little ones are notoriously rough on things, so they need a sturdy version that does the job but can take the rough handling they’ll give it.
The best of the lot for the price is the Fisher Price Kid Tough Digital Camera. It has a binocular view piece so little ones can use both eyes, not just one, to take pictures. For easier handling, it has two handgrips so kids can get a firm grip on it, and it’s sturdy enough to take being dropped. It comes with 8 megabytes of memory and you can buy an SD card to hold more pictures. The 8 MB of memory will store 50 pictures at 640 X 480 resolutions. It comes in pink or blue and uses four AA batteries to run. (One suggestion is to buy some rechargeable batteries, since disposable batteries will need frequent replacing if the camera gets lots of use.)
The Fischer Price kid tough digital camera will cost about $65-70, but it’s worth the price for the tough handling it can take.
The Barbie Digital Camera is sturdy and well built, retailing at about $35. Although its pictures are not top quality and it has no flash (hence a tendency toward “dark” indoor pictures), it’s a good start for kids who are Barbie fans and won’t break your wallet.
The Hello Kitty Digital Camera is very pricey for what you get, retailing at $99, and takes poor quality pictures for the price. The LCD screen is also hard to read, especially at night. Bottom line: don’t waste your money on this kid digital camera.
Finally, if you’ve got a budding videographer as well as photographer in the family, check out Hasbro’s VcamNow, for children old enough to handle slightly more intricate equipment, beginning about age 8. It not only takes 1.2 megapixel digital photos, but also takes video at 10 frames per second. (Fluid motion frame speed is 30 frames per second.) Although the video won’t be smooth at one-third the speed of regular video cameras, it’ll give kids a chance to hone their movie-making skills. It plugs directly into the television for easy viewing, boasts a 4X zoom function, and has 32MB of internal memory and an SD media card slot as well. It retails at $89.