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.

[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 ! , perhaps IT 'challenged' but not 'special'

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? ....

[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]

Maybe the original poster deleted the thread?

[confus-ed]

Mmmmm the posts dated today? (allows for yankee-doodley-back to front dates) ...

...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)