Hey all-
I'm looking for a camera as a Christmas present for a 4 year old.
He's nuts for my phone, but that's only good under direct supervision.

I'm looking for a cheap, robust, simple, digital camera.
No memory or resolution stipulations.
Shouldn't be too hard to find one, right?

Just wondering if anyone here has any opinions (good/bad) to share or might point to a good review-resource.
Thanks in advance!
Stew

I don't have a specific model recommendation, but I suspect a Kodak would suit the task best. Some of their models are particularly straight forward to operate (because they have limited feature sets) and their camera docks + software make downloading very easy as well.

I think you're in the same ballpark as me, looking for a cheap digital camera for my wife's parents. The only real question is whether you want to go with something much cheaper (e.g., a film camera or even one of those "disposable" digital cameras), under the theory that a four-year old is more likely to abuse and/or destroy a camera than an adult.

A couple of years back, I handed my digital camera to my 5 year old niece at a wedding. I didn't see it again for a couple of hours.

After I tracked it down, I watched her play with it for a while. She was having the greatest time just running up to people and snapping their picture, then gazing at the picture she took on the LCD. I had the thought that someone needed to manufacture a kids camera with absolutely no bells or whistles*. Just a lens, ccd, flash, screen, button, and battery in a tough case. No storage memory needed, because all you need is to display the picture until the next one is taken. Put a big LCD on the back, and a nice huge battery in it, since the LCD and associated light will be on all the time, and you're golden. I've seen a lot of cheap digital cameras, but I'm kind of surprised that nobody has seized upon this concept for the preschool set.

I was glad that my camera had a nice big card in it, though, because when I dumped the card, I found she had actually taken a lot of nice pictures. And, I ended up with a lot of pictures of people that I might not have thought necessary to get to pose otherwise.

-Aaron



*unless kids are into actual literal bells and/or whistles these days.