Nikon Camera for a 7 Year Old?

I'd like to buy a Nikon camera for my niece's 7th birthday. Would a

manual focus camera like an FM2 w/50mm lens ($ 250.00 or more)be

appropriate? Would an inexpensive Nikon p/s ($ 100.00) be better? (My

reservations about a p/s would be that she wouldn't be able to learn

any thing about focus, f-stops, shutterspeeds, etc. Maybe she's too

young.) Any thoughts? TIA.

Richard

You don't have any kids, do you?

At 7, unless she's an amazing prodigy, I absolutely would stick with something more like a P&S. She'll become frustrated and confused with too many dials, knobs and controls at that age...she's still trying to get her alphabit down pat at this point for goodness sakes.

 

Also, a $100 point and shoot, unless money is no issue for you, is probably too much as well. 7 year olds like to see if things can swim, they like to play catch, they like to lose things and walk on things. Go buy a $20 P&S, or, at a reach, a $50 P&S with a little zoom lens. Let her learn the joy and magic of photography in it's simplest form. Let her learn about composition and light without worrying about the mechanics of a camera. When she's outgrown that you can buy her an F5--maybe when she's 10!!

 

Also, don't discount the option of a little digital camera, some of the 1MP cameras that are otherwise fairly full featured can be had for b/w $100 & 200 dollars. If the parents are involved she might avoid destroying that for a while. also, she's probably proficient enought at computers at her age to upload and manipulate her own photos...further adding to the 'magic'. Plus, the parents won't be stuck buying film or paying to have hundreds of pictures of people's feet processed.....may be the most economical option--assuming the camera survives.

I had a Kodak Instamatic when I was 4 or 5 (in fact I still have it somewhere). It's really fun to look back at those slides.

 

I know this is the Nikon forum, but if you want a simple but nice quality camera, I'd suggest the Olympus Stylus Epic - it's "kid size", relatively sturdy, water resistant, easy to use. I think your reservations about fstops and shutterspeeds are correct.

FM2!!! You seen how well they are constructed? A kid could hurt themselves with one of those! :)

 

I THINK that someone out there makes some toy (as in bright colors and heavy duty plastic) cameras that take actual pictures. Digital and film IIRC. Check those out. Built for abuse and they bounce when you throw them at your sibling's head....

Bad idea. Too big and heavy and bulky and complex. She'd have trouble using it ... or she'd break it.

 

Get her a good point and shoot, like an Olympus Stylus Epic, for $90.

 

Or find one of those brightly-colored, kid-sized $35 quarter-frame Nickelodeon cameras that lets you shoot 144 images on a 36-exposure roll of film.

I've shot with kids and there's one achilles heel of SLR cameras: film loading. There's a 99% chance she will put her finger through the shutter within 1 year.

 

How about an old medium format folder or rangefinder with a leaf shutter? (I hesitate to recommend the Holga plastic 120 camera with only a couple of shutter speeds and aperture settings)

 

If you loath her getting better images than your Nikons how about a 1970's cheap 35mm rangefinder? They have manual f/stops and shutter, some don't even require batteries. http://www.cameraquest.com/com35s.htm - Canon, Olympus and Yashica made good ones.

I have a a 6 year-old daughter, but I doubt she'd appreciate an FM2--although she has taken photos with my F100 + 35-70 f/2.8 AFD on auto everything (she could barely hold the camera, but wanted to try). What she does like is the Olympus Stylus Epic and she easily learned how to take great pictures with it when she was 5 years old. It's pretty tough and it's auto-everything. A seven year-old may have a rudimentary grasp of basic fractions, but shutter speeds and apertures? Fugheddaboudit! A simple digital also might work. Let her enjoy the basic act of photography and when she gets older you can her a more complicated camera. Earth to Mike, Earth to Mike: A medium format folder for a 7 year-old? :-)

Ya OK I guess a folder is a stretch. I'll take my head out of my a$$ now. I have a Stylus Epic too but worry about the over sensitive release for the hands of a 7 year old. The difference between focus and fire is VERY slight.

 

My daughter is only 2 and fired a Omega 67 Rapid 100 last night...but daddy did the composing, focusing, and exposure. She sure gets a kick out of the cable release though after the strobes fire.

For kids: Enable them to concentrate on composing images. Let manual focus aperture and the rest of the tech stuff wait for at least five more years. Holding the camera still, getting the subject in a decent place and pushing the button is enough of a challenge. Auto "everything" is the way to go. Maybe not even zoom.

Have you considered a polaroid? A 7 year old waiting for film to be developed?? She can work on composition, have instant results. Cool to watch it develop. We gave our 2 year old a polaroid last night. With our help, he photographed 2 of our cats and mommy and daddy. We were able to watch the image appear....very exciting.

Get one of those yellow waterproof P&S's, if they still make them. Kids somehow end up in watery regions.

My father-in-law gave my 5-year-old son a camera for Christmas, a cheapo P&S with a plastic lens and a viewfinder that looks to cover about a 50 mm although the lens is a 28 mm. He ran around and took pictures like crazy, blowing a roll of film in no time flat, and patiently waited for the film to come back. Today, he looked at his first pictures, and you could feel the pride radiating out of the kid. It was great to watch.

 

That's what it's all about. Kids don't need anything complicated; they need cameras they can point at things, and make pictures with. He'll use this camera for a couple of years and then break it. And I'll happily buy him another.

 

A camera like that allows a kid to worry about the two most important things in photography, which have nothing to do with f-stops and shutter speeds. To wit:

1) what you put in the frame,

2) what you leave out.

Sounds like a bit much but what the heck. My first camera, at age 8, was a Brownie. My second, at age 9, was a borrowed Yashica Electro-something fixed lens rangefinder - manual focus, mostly autoexposure with some override. By age 10 I was ready for a borrowed Yashica Mat 124 TLR, manual everything - didn't even have a light meter, I just used the sunny 16 and wing it rule. By age 11 I was ready for my first 35mm SLR but had to wait 'til my 13th birthday.

 

The main problem with most 35mm SLRs is the size and weight - it'll be heavy and cumbersome for most 7-y/o's.

 

Whether she's ready for a camera that fits her size but allows some manual control, you'll have to decide. I was lucky enough to be in a position where pro photographers were around (my stepdad was a filmmaker) and I learned a lot, quickly, by talking with them when they weren't busy.

I've bought both of my daughters, 4 and 7, polaroids. They love them. At those ages the immediacy of the image goes a long way to keeping them interested. The only thing is that keeping them in film gets expensive.

I always gave my son a waterproof/panoramic disposable for school trips and stuff, then a Canon Owl when he was 9 or 10. The fact that his eye for color and composition was immediately better than mine was momentarily distressing.

I know what you mean, Josef. At the last wedding I photographed I recruited my 10-year-old cousin as an assistant. After the formal stuff was finished I let him use my OM-1 with wide angle set to hyperfocal distance and flash set to auto to snap photos of the other kids. He got better, more natural photos of the kids than I did! He often tilted the camera but a bit of cropping and straightening fixed that.

Go digital. She'd love it.

�Or find one of those brightly-colored, kid-sized $35 quarter-frame Nickelodeon cameras that lets you shoot 144 images on a 36-exposure roll of film.�

 

It�s called the Nickelodeon PhotoBlaster, and it�s been discontinued. but you can find them at an certain auction site (!!) but for a price... they�re now collector�s items. looks like fun though, i thought of getting one for my kid brother.