Elizabeth’s THIRD birthday is approaching quickly and Erica and I have decided that the perfect gift for Elizabeth would be a digital camera - one that ACTUALLY works.
She has already taken an interest in photography and has begun to do her own ‘photo shoots’, posing her sister and taking imaginary photos with her toy camera. 
Occasionally she asks to take photos with ‘daddy’s camera’, and with my help, she manages to take a decent photo!
So, we are trying to decide what to buy for her. Looking at what is currently being offered in the ‘Kid Camera’ category is rather disappointing. EVERY camera in this category has received negative reviews on all the usual sites and blogs. The specs and features of a couple of them are so poor, it’s not much of a jump up from her current TOY camera! (If every photo is tiny and blurred, what’s the point of getting a REAL camera?)
Therefore, I’m asking for your help. Does anyone out there have experience with any of the current kid cameras? Any advice or recommendations?
Any input would be greatly appreciated!
Hi! I'm Steve Webel and this is my blog. Thanks for stopping by!
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What features are important to you? Is it most important that the camera be as infdestructable as possible? What’s your budget? Do you have a plan for what to do if she accidentall breaks it? These would all be questions I would try to answer before settling on a non-kid model. And I’d probably try to buy used, whatever model I settled on.
Important features:
Large & Clear LCD screen on back of camera.
On-camera Flash
Ability to take a clear picture when in descent light
Can take some abuse (the kind a 3yo dishes out)
That’s my list that I can think of off the top of my head.
So far the Polaroid is at the top of my list, but it’s rated for 6yo and up…
Not sure Elizabeth will care too much how nice the camera is. You can see our flickr photos (http://flickr.com/photos/tjdwebel/)of the camera the boy below us had. He liked it, and so did Emily. Fisher Price. Neither of them gave it a bad review on their blogs or usual sites!
I’ve read that the fisher price camera has a terrible LCD screen on the back, to the point of being unusable. If that is true, then it will make the ‘experience’ of using a REAL camera much less enjoyable for Elizabeth.
Also, the FP is only .3mp - which means really really fuzzy photos. Elizabeth already has a TOY camera, so we are not looking for something that she can ‘pretend’ to take photos with…
Full disclosure– I work for the company that designed and manufactures this camera for Disney.
http://www.toygroove.com/pics-vids/pixjr-mickey.html
Just another one to check out…
Emily, am I right in that us Macintosh users should not buy this camera because it will not work with a Mac?
Does it not take photos in jpeg format (or some other standard?) What makes it not work with a Mac?
I’m actually out on maternity leave, so I had to check the customer service site to see if JR is a mass storage device. It is, so you should be able to use it with a Mac. You just can’t use the included software.
http://digiblue.com/customer-service/faqs/disney/pixjr/03.html