The reviews of kiddie cameras are mixed, so I finally bought this for my just turned 4 year old daughter (for her birthday last week) with some trepidation. We've now had it for over 1 week, and its been a huge hit! I've never seen her take a toy with her everywhere and use it so often. So just from that perspective, its been a big success.
It takes small pictures (.3 of a megapixel), and takes a few secs to focus on an image (during which camera needs to be held still, a bit of a challenge for a toddler, but good discipline), but if you keep these 2 things in mind, the pictures aren't bad (certainly not as horrible as some reviewers imply). When I take pictures, and hold the unit still (and let the auto focus focus on the subject, the pictures are decent - albeit not great by any stretch). The flash is useless in almost all conditions (except possibly night), but you can easily turn it off (by pressing the delete picture button). Yes it has no zoom, but my daughter likes to experiment by moving closer and farther away. Yes the eye pieces can lead one to cut off the subjects head, but the LCD display is accurate, and I have taught my daughter to use this to frame pictures. She caught on quickly.
We added a 256 MB SD card, and she's been happily clicking away ever since. She's figured out how to delete and put the various supplied graphics (frames and funny facial features) over her real life subjects. I haven't yet shown her the video or games or other editing features.
One of the best features of this camera is the ability to hook it into the tv - no computer connection needed for her. She quite likes to see her pictures on the big screen. On my 62" tv, the pixelation is pretty awful, but I hope on smaller lcds it would be more acceptable.
In the long run, we will give her a better camera that takes better pictures (likely one of our old ones), but for now this is teaching her about photography, and its tough and kid friendly. Just don't expect amazing photos (she doesn't, so why should we?), and this more than delivers the goods for a 2-5 year old in my view.
While clearly not bullet proof, so far I've been impressed with the build quality and thoughtfulness of teh design - hardly the piece of junk that some others have labeled this toy. Good luck. Vtech Kidizoom Plus Digital Camera - Pink
I have to admit that I was not very familiar with the Vtech brand prior to this purchase and was a little skeptical. Everyone I had asked advice from in regards to a digital camera for my 4 year old told us to get the Fisher Price camera. Well...we followed their advice and were VERY disappointed with the Fisher Price camera. For lack of a better word, it was TERRIBLE to say the least. Picture was impossible to make out and it was just boring.I returned it the day after the party and picked up the Vtech version. THIS CAMERA ROCKS!!!! The picture is clear, there's a flash, you use as a video camera, you can even add some stamps to the photos like a pirate hat and eye patch. Our daughter is having a blast with this camera. Oh yeah...there's even 3 games in it!
This was a great purchase!!
My kids have had these for about a year and they still love them. The feature they love the most is the ability to record their voices for a picture. For example, they will take a pic of our dog and record themselves barking. They love the video function as well. Great camera and even though the resolution is not perfect, they love everything about them.
This is the best kids camera on the market. You get so much for the price. You can take photos and put crazy special effects on them. My kids love doing that. You can also take video and photos with voice. My 4 year old daughter got the fisher price camera and it was awful! The display was tiny and you couldn't see the photos you took. It didn't have any special effects, video capability, or games. We returned the fisher price model and got this camera and love love love it! I had to buy another one for my 7 year old son because he was fighting over the camera. I got it in a different color so they could tell them apart. I even find myself playing with it. Yes the quality is not super but you can put a memory card in and take 2 megapixel photos which is great for a kids camera.
My 6-year old granddaughter, who searches for & plays educational games on PBS websites, loves this camera. She finds it easy to download, using MacOSX, her photos and movies (often noisy from internal mechanical movement). The ratings are hers. The ratings might have been much lower had I not taken the steps below.
VTech, in my opinion, should have foreseen the consequences of selling a camera without an SD card or clock. I'm adamant about archiving her movies (with her voice describing what she is photographing). Here two major but easily fixed problems appear, one undocumented.
1. Her most precious photos were those first taken, using the 16 MB of volatile memory. However, the four AA batteries don't last long: had they run out, she would have only moments to replace them with a small Phillips screwdriver or lose them all, forever. This, in my experience, can be traumatic, driving even adults away from technology.
The solution is to buy and install in a battery compartment a tiny SD memory card. A 2GB one is very inexpensive and allows hordes of photos & movies. Apple & Amazon sell this one:
Crucial 2 GB SD Memory Card
After installing it, you may need to use the camera to move volatile photos & movies to the permanent SD card.
2. Let's examine this statement: 'And don't despair if you're a Mac user. As long as you have Mac OS X 10.0 or above, you can still use the camera in mass storage mode.' What is mass storage mode? Your adult digital camera uses USB PTP, Picture Transfer Protocol, which stores dates, times, and exposure data in the EXIF portion of the JPEG file. However, VTech didn't provide a simple quartz clock: no dates.
So, 'native support' of USB for a mass storage device means only that information all files have in common: a file. No date, no time, no EXIF. The date is the most important. One reviewer thought, as I, MacOSX would write a correct creation date if all photos are moved from the camera at the end of the day: it does not.
A Unix programmer would write a script using 'touch', but I chose the inexpensive shareware program 'File Juicer'.
[...]
Dropping the disk image onto its icon creates folders with tiny photo icons on the pictures and dates on both photos & movies. These can be moved into place.
One must then manually erase photos & movies from the camera's SD card, for the files are not recognized as photos by your Mac, and neither Image Capture nor iPhoto will automatically move them to your hard disk.
3. Traditionally, one connects a USB cable with the device (camera) turned off, then turns on the device. The device activates the driver and a white disk drive icon appears on the Desktop for the volatile memory (VTech 733) and for the SD card (VTech 744). Almost. First, however,
(a) I copied all photos & movies from the volatile to card memory using the camera. (They would otherwise be lost.)
(b) VTech's driver does not speak very loudly to MacOSX's native one: I must plug and unplug the USB cable at the computer while the camera is on, then wait for the icons to appear. this is a common kludge for badly-written drivers. (Once the card's virtual disk mounted, I renamed it to my granddaughter's first name.)
In conclusion, an extra $10 will be needed for an SD Card and, probably, $15 for Mac users interested in archiving their child's first photos. Almost all of the actions I suggest here, I feel, are likely important to your child. - Vtech - Kids Camera - Digital Camera For Kids - Toddler Camera'
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