Old Adult Camera = New Kid Camera

One of my original ideas for BigBrother’s Christmas list was one of those kid cameras. After reading the poor reviews that the few available ones have, I went with the best Christmas surprise ever. I don’t regret that choice at all. But in the month since Christmas has passed, BigBrother has taken an even stronger interest in photography.

As I continued researching, I started letting BigBrother hold my DSLR once a day and snap a photo of someone or something. I know this sounds insane (OMG! WHAT IF HE DROPS IT?!) but letting him take one picture per day made him smile with glee. After seeing how good he was at lining up the person in the photo and pressing the button, I started rethinking camera options. Here are a few samples of his DSLR shots.

Apparently I’m his favorite subject. (Also, I apparently wear a lot of green. Interesting.) All the same, the point is that I didn’t ever teach him how to line a person up or even what button to push. After being the subject of over 10,000 pictures himself, he just learned by osmosis or some other scientific means. He knew how to look through the eye piece, find me in the viewfinder and press the button. Not too shabby.

After seeing the results from his once-daily DSLR usage, I started to reconsider the kid camera issue. Their reviews are not all that great and none of them contain a flash which, if you know about photography, can help create a more stable, less blurry photograph. As an adult, I can hold my arms pretty still. As a kid, well, let’s just say that BigBrother is a constant blur of motion himself and that without a flash, he’d be likely to show that blur. To make matters worse, he doesn’t like blurry pictures. He told me so when I forgot to open the flash on my DSLR once. “Mommy, this picture is broken.” Great.

I didn’t want to spend lots of (and/or any) money on a real adult camera either. Knowing that the constant blur of motion also occasionally falls down and frequently bumps into walls, I was having a hard time justifying the $100 purchase of a camera that might not stand up to drops or hard use. So, I debated it for awhile longer.

Until I remembered our old camera!

If you read our old blog, you may remember the drama of our old camera and why we no longer shop at Best Buy. Suffice it to say that the camera is of little use to us anymore but it still works. It took me a full two days to remember where I had put the thing. It needed batteries. On one of the three memory cards for it (two of which work, one doesn’t), I found a picture of the pregnancy test from when we found out about LittleBrother! I formatted them all (confirming that one really didn’t work anymore) and called BigBrother upstairs.

He was confused as it is a point and shoot and, therefore, he doesn’t have to look through the eye piece. (Though he can.) I explained how to switch it off and on and how to look at the pictures he had just taken. And then I set him loose.

I’m raising a mini-photographer, I tell you. Let’s highlight some of his first day photos.

His fire boot and some books!

FireDad “sleeping” as the running into the bedroom actually woke him up.
(Which, yes, was my secret plan when I said, “Go take one of Daddy!”

Somehow he snapped a good picture of me!

LittleBrother looks confused but sits still anyway.

Yes, I took one of him at the same time because I’m way dorky.

There are others, of course. Many others. The top of LittleBrother’s head. FireDad’s slippers. His caterpillar bed. A pile of books. Blocks. His toy box. Everything. He wants to take a picture of everything. At every moment. It’s very amusing.

There are rules, of course. He is not allowed to just carry the camera around at random which is the only benefit I can see to one of the kid-safe cameras. As it could bust if he dropped it down the stairs, the rule is that we have to be actively in the room with him as he’s snapping away. He can run back the hall and take a picture of his caterpillar bed but I have to be aware that he has the camera at the time. We’ve found that some camera time after lunch lets him get some photobug out of his system. But the  best time for snapping pictures we have found is after supper. That hour and a half before bedtime is now a funny time of photographing.

I know part of this whole decision to go with an old camera instead of a kid-safe camera is because I’m a pseudo-photographer and, as such, a photo-snob. I don’t like grainy, blurry pictures any more than BigBrother does. I also feel that they are “broken.” The only blur I approve of is motion blur that comes on the action setting. Otherwise, clean pictures, please! His new-old camera is only 4MP but it’s that addition of a flash that really makes all the difference.

And, yes, I’m prepared for it to break sometime in the future. I imagine a fight between TheBrothers with tugging and pulling and the eventual camera flying through the air to crash into a million and one pieces. I will probably be upset, yes, but the point is that we had a camera that was getting no use. Some of its settings and abilities don’t work properly due to the Best Buy Debacle of 2007. It is of no use to me. But I don’t like things to go to waste. And so as long as it has enough function to snap a picture, save it to the memory card and be retrieved from that memory card, I’ll let him have that camera. (Don’t ask me what I’ll do when it eventually quits working or ends up broken. But it won’t be a kid camera. I’ll tell you that.)

Until then, look for monthly updates on BigBrother’s best photographs!