Camera choice, special needs children

[bookmarkmns]

I've been asked to recommend a digital camera to be used in a school for children with special needs. The children have physical and leaning disabilities.
The teacher and her support staff are not IT-oriented but are keen to offer photography for the children. It will help chart progress too.
Ease of use and rugged construction are key thoughts. Sure would appreciate ideas.

[bookmarkmns]

I've been asked to recommend a digital camera to be used in a school for children with special needs. The children have physical and leaning disabilities.
The teacher and her support staff are not IT-oriented but are keen to offer photography for the children. It will help chart progress too.
Ease of use and rugged construction are key thoughts. Sure would appreciate ideas

[Major Kong]

What Operating Software will be used? The reason I'm asking is that the Jam Cam 3.0 is a nice little very inexpensive camera with some decent software. The problem is that they don't operate in Win XP. The cameras are about $20-25 here in the US. Read about it here:
This is a dated review. The price is way less. (http://www.pbzone.com/jamcamreview.shtml)

[bookmarkmns]

Win ME will be the operating system. Thanks for the name I'll see if I can get it here. Any other ideas welcome

[Platypus]

The Kodak cameras tend to be good value (though nowhere near as cheap as above) and easy to use, with friendly software. I don't think the economy models are especially rugged though, my CX4200 has a kind of rubbery socket cover that would soon break off without care.

[NooNoo]

What is the budget?

And what quality of pictures are you looking for?

There so many "cheapies" most of which take lousy pics if you want to be able to zoom into the resulting picture.

[confus-ed]

Originally posted by bookmarkmns
....Ease of use and rugged construction are key thoughts. Sure would appreciate ideas.

I don't want to appear to be heartless here, but how 'special' are these guys ? There just isn't a camera around that's gonna stand up to being used as a football !

Might I suggest the word 'cheap' ?

With pretty much any automatic digital camera all you do is press on, then snap.... the software is where it gets complicated ! Presummably the teachers aren't 'special' too !:D , perhaps IT 'challenged' but not 'special' :D

And the budget for this is ???

You can buy a lot of cheap cameras for the same cost as one 'decent' one, if 'sharing' is an issue with these 'special' guys that might well be better, it takes longer to break several cheap cameras than one expensive one....

Please don't take this as a 'rant' against the less able of us, but I'd recommend to any first time camera user to start simple(read cheap) and progress from there once they knew what they really wanted ..... ;)

[bookmarkmns]

The budget on this is about £300 ($450 or sso). I think the quality needs to be OK but not superfine, I've found the very cheap camera images below acceptable so I'd we're looking at 2 megapixels and above. Ease of use, like reasonable size buttons would help. Software bundle usefu but not essential. Ease of transferring images important
Cheers!

[kato2274]

warranty is what I'd really be looking for if I were you, because anything in the hands of kids WILL be broken no matter how careful everyone is (kids and dogs . . . nature's wrecking balls) so it's either buy things that are essentially disposable (jam cams) or get on heck of a warranty on whatever you get.

If you have a retail store that will offer extended warranty with no questions asked I'd jump on it, but I'd make sure that all possible things would be covered. . . . . there is nothing more irritating then buying one of those things then having them say you repair isn't covered.

[kato2274]

what happened to this thread? I replied to it this morning. major kong replied and Noo Noo yesterday. where'd the replies go.

[confus-ed]

Originally posted by kato2274
what happened to this thread? I replied to it this morning. major kong replied and Noo Noo yesterday. where'd the replies go.

...now lookee here mister, I'm the confus-ed one ... disappearing posts whatever next? ....http://www.jp3d.net/yahoo/images/new/09.gif

[kato2274]

major kong reccomended the cheap Jam Cams as they would be disposable and work with 9X systems. don't remember if Noo reccomended anything as much as just try to clarify requirements. I had a semi lengthy post about either going disposable like major kong suggested or finding someplace that would give a no questions asked extended warranty . . . . because kids and dogs are nature's wrecking balls. if you want it broken leave it around a kid or dog and walk away.

[NooNoo]

:confused:

Maybe the original poster deleted the thread?

[confus-ed]

Mmmmm the posts dated today? (allows for yankee-doodley-back to front dates) ... http://www.jp3d.net/yahoo/images/new/52.gif

...perhaps there's another post somewheres ? ....

[kato2274]

That's what I thought at first Noo, but the first post is still time stamped as yesterday evening (eastern US time)

[bookmarkmns]

I'm a dingbat!
D-I-N-G-B-A-T
Please keep them coming

[confus-ed]

...so anybody actually got a suggestion, then ? Other than cheap or 'easily' returnable ? .... http://www.jp3d.net/yahoo/images/new/60.gif

[confus-ed]

Originally posted by bookmarkmns
I'm a dingbat!
D-I-N-G-B-A-T
Please keep them coming

....as the confus-ed one, I'll take the liberty of excusing you for your confus-ed-ness, causing so much confus-ion.....

Have a look at this link, someone's comparred four freely available sub $100 'kids' cameras
Consumer reports for kids - cameras (http://www.zillions.org/Features/Digital/dcam001.html)

[NooNoo]

I will Unconfus-ed you

Threads merged :D

[confus-ed]

Originally posted by NooNoo
I will Unconfus-ed you

Threads merged :D

....are you sure about that ? it's worse now than it was before ....http://www.jp3d.net/yahoo/images/new/56.gif

[bookmarkmns]

Thanks for the suggestions and the link. Still require more ideas and would welcome any comments on art progs, photo editors the like. for the children.
I'm a dingbat as I seemed to lose somehow the a reply, no idea how.
Regards to all from deepest Gloucestershire UK

[confus-ed]

As for 'art progs, photo editors, the like. for the children' - honestly you'll be lucky, most of them are hard enough for 'fully functional adults' .... its really hard to say when we don't know the 'level' ..... 'special' & or 'learning difficulties' covers a multitude of conditions ... perhaps a guess at the average 'age' (for a 'normal' kid, ..is there such a thing?...).

How much 'intervention' can we expect, I really can't see any software being appropriate for use on its own, by anyone other than staff ..... & do we have any more pennies for the software ?

£300 is gonna get you a 2 mega pixel camera easy, COMPARE DIGITAL CAMERAS (http://www.reviewcentre.com/products19.html)

Really you want a uk camera forum to get better answers than you will here , ask us something technical like how do cmos cameras work, somebody can tell you , but we fix stuff, we don't actually use any of it ! :D

Try here (http://www.digitalcameramagazine.co.uk/)

[bookmarkmns]

Hi all
Thanks confus-ed.
Penny's (cents etc) will be short on software and the children will I agree need to be supervised.Average age is difficult but the learning disabilities will be moderate to severe. The school is a special school and on a functional basis we are looking between 2 - 6 though some of the children will be far older in years.
Thanks for the link by the way.
Anymore thoughts would be well appreciated
bookmarkmns

[confus-ed]

You are welcome bookmarkmns :)

Since I seem to be the only one left who isn't confus-ed by this thread I'll keep posting those links ! :D

Try this for 'editing' proggies (http://graphicssoft.about.com/cs/imageediting/tp/beginphotoedw.htm)

But before I start chasing software for you, you need to appreciate that most cameras come with some 'bundled' software .... since we have no extra pennies for that, I'd suggest you hold out until you've made your camera choice & see what you get 'chucked in' ....

Finding a camera suitable for a six year old (max) might be tricky, though having said that my now 7 year old little girl got on famously with her 'Barbie' :rolleyes: (I know!) camera, for almost a year until another of her friends 'helped' it to an early demise whilst trying to clean it ! ... in the bath !!!! :D

I think given all you've told us, I'd be very tempted to start with a really cheapo camera, at say under £50 & use that for a bit to 'learn' & gauge what any problems are .... then in a couple of months buy a 'real' one ... you'll probably find by then that a camera which costs £250 now will cost £199 ... hopefully !

For camera opinions like I said perhaps a camera forum....? :p

One other thing you might like to think about is the cost of printing all these digital images, ink for inkjets is ridiculously expensive .... since I want a new Inkjet anyways I'm just about to open a thread on that (which is cheapest to run?)...so you might want to monitor that one too....;)

[confus-ed]

Here's the 'Inkjet' thread I was talking about....

I want a value inkjet (http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/wd/showthread.php?s=&threadid=50014)