I GAVE A CAMERA TO A FOUR YEAR OLD

Aaron's first evening with his new mini-vivitar.

(click on collage to enlarge)

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Those shots of him were still frame captures from it's PC CAMERA mode-

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Dad(I) chose when and clicked the mouse for those.

Ok, it's a "what was I thinking?" kind of event. This tiny little camera has only two buttons, and yet a full camera's worth of "modes" and "functions" .

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It has a tiny little pop up view finder with the worst possible plastic view lens in it. This makes it nigh on to impossible to actually or accurately see what you're taking a picture of. Framing is, at best, an approximate kind of venture.

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It has cryptic two character codes for functions which appear in the tiny and not well lit lcd display on the front of the camera. It will time itself out and turn off after a thirty second period of no button pushing. So the Dad has to tab to the correct code, hand it to the four year old and then say -

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"go take pictures FAST, but remember to be very still while shooting, and remember to keep your fingers/thumbs out from in front of the lens - even if you DO think that's hilarious, and remember it has no flash so try to shoot stuff that's in good light(try explaining the photographic meaning of good light to a 4 yr old), and no, you won't get what you want if you hold it out like Daddy does his camera, 'cause there's no view screen to aim with, and yeah, I know it's hard to see through the little view window, and, and, There you Go!, you've taken a beautiful picture of something neither one of us can identify, and SURE, we can down load those thirteen pictures so you can see them and then start all over again......."

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Ok, so it might be good to spend a little more than ten bucks for your kid's first digital camera....on the other hand, he couldn't be more thrilled with it, even if I could.

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He particularly loves the PC CAMERA MODE because he can point the camera around (as far as it's three foot patch cord will go) and see what it sees, real time, while it's doing it. I still have to point and click the mouse on the capture still frame button. He can't be expected to do that, hold, point the camera, and try to tell it a story or sing into it because he Doesn't understand that it JUST DOESN'T DO sound.

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And then the not well translated from Asian instructions on the included software will actually let you save to something else like picassa 3 so you can do an utterly heart warming, if not finely artistic, collage of your little person's first shooting experience with their own camera.

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Ok, that was SO worth ten bucks, a half an hour's worth of frantic direction deciphering, and patient camera coaching of a four year old.

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In retrospect, this would probably a lot more practical for, say, an eight year old, although an eight year old would be more immediately aware of the little camera's limitations, there by inciting I'm sure much lobbying for a bigger/better camera. Of course, I guess, many eight year olds now probably have a camera built into their personal cell phones that they can picture message with.... Ah, life in this, the best of all possible twenty first centuries........

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And so it begins.......