Fisher-Price Kid-Tough Waterproof Digital Camera Blue
From Fisher-Price
Customer Reviews
It's a toy, not a camera
The important thing to realize about this product is that it's much more of a toy than it is a camera. It's built with plenty of rubber around the body to cushion the blow of repeated falls and also makes it easier to grip. The functions available are only the most basic possible. The lens has no zoom capability, there are virtually no settings to change, it's a true point and shoot. For children who want to carry a camera around and feel like they're taking pictures it's great.
Unfortunately, if your child is old enough to make even a passing effort at improving his photos, then this camera will not serve. The LCD is low resolution and fades badly in direct sunlight. The viewfinder is both badly distorted and shows only a small portion of the area that will be photographed. And the photos themselves are so grainy, poorly focused, and poorly exposed that it won't matter what your child does. Every picture will look awful because the camera simply isn't capable of doing better.
In summary, this is a perfectly good gift for children that would enjoy playing with a camera. The price is reasonable and it's built to take a decent amount of punishment. As long as you are okay with photos that aren't worth looking at, let alone printing, you'll be happy with the purchase.
Fisher-Price Fun!
Would you give a child a camera to play with on their own? Now you can. Fisher-Price has been making children's toys since 1930 and this is truly a wonderful toy for a youngster. This is very durable and your child can drop this camera over and over again without fear of breaking it (within reason, of course. I can't say you can drop it off the roof!). It will survive laying in the wet grass or even under 3 feet of water (for no more than 30 minutes they say). It's the simplicity that your kid will love. The viewfinder is actually `two-eye viewing' like those old 3-D viewers from the sixties. Your child can just push their face right into the camera and easily learn what makes a good picture. The controls are easy and you'll probably find your child shooting silly picture after silly picture until they learn which shots are their favorites. The 1.5" color LCD screen shows your child exactly what the picture looks like - instant gratification! Being smaller, you might have to teach your child to aim higher to get a complete photo. It has a 64 MB built in memory for up to about 500 photos. If you want 4" X 6" quality photos, you can set the resolution for your child giving about 200 high quality photos. After your child has dropped, kicked, splashed and finished up taking photos, you can take over. You can easily download them to your computer, where you can crop them for your kid. After that, you'll be the one ordering the prints. This is a keeper!
This turned out to be one of the best toy purchases I've made. My two year old son doesn't have a lot of interest in "toys"; instead he prefers the real (and often breakable) thing. Here we have the best of both worlds: a working digital camera that's stood up to the best my son can do. It's the most fun when there are two kids: they can run around taking pictures of each other going "Say cheese!" It's fun to look at the pictures and send them to the grandparents.
It almost goes without saying the picture quality is poor, however if you read the manual you can increase the quality pretty easily. Copying pictures off the camera is easy: just plug a USB cable into the camera and your computer (no extra software needed). Battery life has also proven to be good. I've had it about four months and only changed batteries once.
The only minor complaint I have: the button to take pictures is on the front which is a little awkward for small hands.