Camera for 8 yr old daughter

Mr Perceptive

Mr Perceptive

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My daughter is 8 very shortly and she wants a new camera for her birthday.

For the last 5 years she's been using a Creative Webcam 750, which was very simple to use and 'for her' produced effective photos and movies. Our requiements are:-

* Up to about £130 but that should include memory card and case
* Capable of movies with sound at 640x480 resolution
* Easy to use, not loads of menus, simple dial type Auto/Playback/Movie selector, not fiddly ie no small buttons
* Reasonable Macro Mode
* Fast AF and shutter, she'sliable to take 'action' shots of her friends and she doesn't want them out of shot by the time the shutter fires!

She has used my 350D on occassions and my wife's Panasonic FX01, so is getting used to the two stage shutter

I was thinking about something like a Canon A460

Any other suggestions?

Mr Perceptive
 
I've just got a Canon A710is, which is lovely, and very easy to use, but I think is probably out of your price range. The A460 looks like a very nice little camera though.
 
That's a great idea Mr Perceptive.

I'm not personally up to speed on which models are good in the P&S range, (I havent looked for a while....), I'm sure there are others on here who will.

If your 8yr old is anything like mine, then Im sure she'll love it.

Happy birthday to her BTW :)
 
I bought my son a camera for his 8th birthday in January...

Best camera you can get? The cheapest. I bought a Samsung something-or-other in Jessops for just under £70, and picked up a case as well. With all the best will in the world, an 8-year old is going to give any camera a rough time. It's got a zoom, macro and movie-modes, and he loves it to bits. He does get a shot of my D80 from time to time, and to be quite honest, takes some pretty good pictures with it too.....
 
My daughter is 7 (8 next month) and she had a camera last year.

first we bought her a really really cheap digital for less than a tenner (no review function or anything and i think it was less than 1mp) to see if she would use it and she did

so after some thought, bearing in mind that a child of that age, with all the best will in the world is going to break it.

We bought her one with a fold out screen called digi gr8

the only link i can find for it now is ebay
http://www.ebay.ph/viItem?ItemId=150121919372

hope its ok to link that

she loves it, goes everywhere with her. she uses it for still / video and has recently taking to recording sound like a dictaphone

It cost about £30 with a the mem card, so if she does drop it, it isnt a big deal to replace it. But in honesty she has really looked after it
 
Thanks for the responses

I think she is unlikely to give the camera a hard time as she is quite careful with things, I'd trust here to use my 350D without direct supervision. She has also been handling her own camera since she was 3 and taken thousands of pictures. She deserves something quite reasonable that she won't outgrow for the next few years, then I expect she'll have my 350D as I find an excuse to upgrade!

I'll be making a purchase in the next few days and I'll let you know what I eventually get.

Mr Perceptive
 
have you considered something like a fuji 5600

they can be had for slighty over £100 now, giving you change for your memmory card

and that is a camera that would allow her to learn manual settings a bit (if she has been using cameras for 5 years, even though she is young S mode and A mode may be good for her) as well as full auto settngs, but it might be a bit heavy for her perhaps
 
Bolerus, yes am considering fuji 5600, I have to put the options past her first, don't want to buy something that she just won't use and the fuji 5600 does weigh nearly a kilo, notice a similar type Olympus has just gone on special offer too and it's less than half the weight of the Fuji.

Mr Perceptive
 
Well she is a very lucky girl!!!

Took her into town today and she handled loads of different cameras, but felt more comfortable with larger models, so we broke the budget a bit (as always!) and went for the Olympus SP510 Ultra Zoom which is on special offer at Jessops for £149 (half RRP) until 30/5/07. Also managed to negogiate a decent deal on a 2Gb Sandisk memory card plus Lowepro bag, so all in all, I'm happy and my daughter is estatic.

She found the Olympus much easier to hanle than the Canon cameras (some of those are on a special cashback offer until the end of the bank holiday), and I'd rather she was comfortable with the camera and therefore more likely to use it.

I'd read some of the reviews beforehand and so know some of the limitations of this camera, and we can work round those. Given the way she is going she'll have a dSLR before she is a teenager.

All credit to the staff in Jessops, Shrewsbury who got an endless train of cameras out for her to try and explained how to operate them in basic modes.

Mr Perceptive
 
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