Have any of the parents on here looked into kids digital cameras? I’m after something chunky, tough, with minimal buttons, a lcd screen like mum and dads and a decent response time given the little one won’t keep still. The last one is quite critical, as a blurry mess won’t cut it!

A lot of the market seems to be 640×480 rubbish (e.g the V-Tech or Fisher price models) or just real cheap cameras in a pink or blue box (the hello kitty ones).

Depends on age but we bought one of these and suits the job perfect. Waterproof/droppable etc…..

http://www.jessops.com/online.store/products/80299/show.html

Auto focus thingy that switches to macro when required is a nice feature

Also looked into this for gf’s kids and ended up giving them our old camera before we upgraded

It was gathering dust otherwise

The vtech is pretty good – it’s 2 megapixel camera (the ‘rubbish’ 640 x 480 is , I assume, the video resolution, which is still watchable for a bit of fun). It does suffer with the response time so plenty of blurry pic but some good ones too. It is a toy but it’s a pretty impressive one for the money.

You missed the most important bit – how old’s your child?

We thought about the Vtech, but in the end went for a cheap normal digital camera as we couldn’t see them using it for long. Daughter got a pink Samsung for about £50 which is OK, but my son has a Minolta IIRC that was about £60, and takes brilliant pics. Neither camera is rugged, and they got them when they were about 5 or 6, and both are still working a number of years on.

As above, if they hadn’t had them for xmas, I’d just let them use one of your old cameras.

How old?

my 3.5 yr old has the vtech – pap as a camera, but suitable for a kid of that age – drop proof, waterproof and jumping on proof. images are passable and its great fun to sit and load them up onto the tv and view them – so dont discount it if they are about the same age. i took him to meet a group of wedding photogrpahers i know and network with and he took it along and they loved it – if it suits him and he gets fun out of it and doesnt break it in 5 minutes it is 50 quid well spent imho – when he grows out of it and is a bit older he can have something more grown up (I suspect he’ll be getting the d70 slr I’ve got gathering dust in the cupboard – he’s already got an interest in my work dslr)

V-tech here for petrieboy v2. He’s only 2 1/2 so the dual viewfinder seems to help