Guest Post: Choosing A First Camera For A Young Child

This is a great post to help with picking a camera for your child.  With all the photos that I take, Taft always wants to take some too.  Thank you Alison Graham for the post!  You can check her site out here.

Choosing A First Camera For A Young Child

The first thing to take into consideration when looking for a digital camera for a child, is the age of that child. Just as a professional photographer has very different requirements to someone wanting a ‘point and shoot’ camera that they can take snaps with, so a child of ten or eleven, will need a very different camera to a two or three year old.
Children have a huge fascination with cameras and love the opportunity to take their own pictures right from a very early age. Just about all families have a camera of one sort or another, even this is the one on a mobile phone. Modern cameras are almost all digital nowadays, with film being reserved for more specialist use. This means that children are used to seeing instant results from picture-taking and they are also used to adults and older siblings taking snaps of every occasion and at almost every opportunity.
Whilst very young children will just enjoy the process of taking a snap of just about anything, before long they are trying to frame their compositions and create something they are really pleased with. This is definitely a skill to encourage as it can form the basis of a lifelong interest, possibly a career. It will also help with your child’s development of fine motor skills as well as communication, organization and other skills at the same time – a camera could be regarded as a very good educational toy!
The age of the child will very probably be a factor in your decision of how much to spend on a camera. For very young children, the figure of around $50 is probably a good maximum price to set as there are many models available under this price tag that are certain to delight even the most discerning young child! In fact, there are many cameras within this price bracket that will provide an excellent tool for older children too.

Here are a few suggestions for what you should be looking for in a camera for a child of pre-school age.
Little children love having nice big buttons that they can switch on and off and take pictures with all by themselves, without having to ask for help. This helps them to build confidence and a measure of independence that they will really enjoy.
A nice big display screen is also important for very young children as this really helps them with the process of taking pictures. Viewfinders used just with one eye are trickier for small children.
Probably the single most important thing about choosing a camera for a child in this age group is that the camera must be able to stand up to being used like a toddler’s toy. It must stand up to being dropped, it must be easy and comfortable for little hands to hold and it should have soft contours with no sharp edges or corners.
Automatic features that simplify the process of taking a good picture (for example self-focus and auto-flash) will ensure that your child retains interest in taking pictures and will not be disappointed with the results of their efforts.
Check how much memory the camera has and how many pictures can be stored before having to be downloaded. The aim is to let a child take as many pictures as they want to and not have to stop because the camera is full. Picture quality is not likely to be high with the first efforts so the more your child takes, the more likely it is that there will be some little gems amongst them!

Kids Digital Camera Reviews is a site set up by two moms, guest post author of this article, Alison Graham and her friend Claire Gillespie. The purpose of the site is to provide honest reviews and all the information about features to look for, what’s good and what’s not! Please pay the site a visit if you are considering buying a camera for a child in your family.