When you give a kid a camera, the world immediately becomes more interesting.
When you give a kid a camera, toes are immediately the most photogenic part of the body.
When you give a kid a camera, posing favored stuffed animals becomes an art form.
When you give a kid a camera, a series of selfies is priceless.
When you give a kid a camera, you discover a different perspective of the world.
When you give a kid a camera, you just might get the perfect shot.
Tips for Giving Your Kid a Camera
You may be tempted to begin with a kid-specific camera. Like the VTech – Kidizoom. Though it is virtually indestructible, it is also a bit large and my kids didn’t like to carry it around. My advice – search eBay or garage sales for older point & shoot cameras. They are inexpensive and take much better photos.
Give your kids time to play with the camera, but also show them some of the features it has that they will like – special modes like fisheye and miniature are especially fun. If the camera didn’t come with a manual, most can be found online with a simple search.
Buy a decent size memory card – 8 or 16GB – and set the photo aspect and pixel size to normal to no more than 3264px. This is large enough to print 13″ x 19” photos, but you can still get thousands of images on an SD card.
Download photos from the camera! SD cards don’t last forever, and your kids will love seeing the photos they took on a larger screen. To find the photos easily, create a folder called (Name) Photos and in that folder create separate folders by date.
Though tempting, I don’t recommend letting your kids use your cell phone as a camera. Though you may have gotten it “free” with a contract, it is a mini-computer and is expensive to replace. Also, if they get the photo-bug you may have a hard time getting it back!
My daughters received their first cameras at the age of three. Their photos have been amusing, endearing, and eye-opening. It is truly amazing to see the world from their perspective.
Have you given your kid a camera? At what age? What did they take pictures of?
