[Northern Soul]

The kid has obviously seen daddy point a camera at her once too often, and has now taken matters into her own hands - literally.

She has now progressed from wanting to see the pictures on the back of the camera to wanting to take them herself. It's at once quite cute and utterly terrifying to see her walking about with my K-7 and 480t flash, but she does a pretty good job - she hasn't dropped it yet, at least.

She's also now got the hang of zooming, but it's a bit tricky to do when you only have small hands, so she doesn't do that so much - and if she does it's generally to one end of the range or the other, before she takes the shot.

I have to say that I'm quite impressed with her framing and so on. She likes it best when "there is lots of flashing red" (loads of blown highlights) so the pictures aren't technically great, but her framing is decent. She asked for her own camera for Christmas so I have got her a Canon G2 off eBay as it seems a nice size for her hands, will be much better than any of those toy cameras, has everything from fully manual to fully automatic, and was only £25 off eBay boxed.

Here's one of her's of our Christmas tree. As I said, she likes a blown highlights, so I dial that in for her, but it's well framed for a not-quite 3-and-a-hlaf year old with a K-7 and a decent sized flash. My only concern about the G2 is that you have to delve into the menu to make it flash the blown highlights!



So, tell me your tales of little kids and cameras

[Sagitta]

My older guy hasn't taken interest in the 'taking' yet, but he definitly is a camera ham. He's only 2 (well, almost, come Christmas) so he has a bit to go yet before I expect him to maybe take interest in the 'other side' of the lens.

My littler guy is 7 months old, but he smiles readily. I'm not sure if he'll ever be able to take much interest in photography - he has something called nystagmus which will likely make focusing a camera a pain in the ass when he gets older.

[LaurenOE]

Funny. I went the cheapo Canon route too!
My niece is 6+ and she wanted a camera like her Aunt!
I didn't want her to destroy or lose a Pentax, so I got her a Canon something-or-other.
She is a picture-taking-wonder!!
Here she is in a museum in London taking pictures for herself!



She's learned to put the strap around her wrist, and to look through the viewfinder.
She's chimping here, making sure the shot meets her approval!

[TER-OR]

I've let my grand-nieces play with my K-5 a couple times. One wanted to experiment with the big Vivitar 500mm telephoto. Not easy to focus, but she had fun and learned what to do.

This past Thanksgiving another was very interested in astronomy so we went out with the 55-300 (the best long lens I had with me) and took shots of the moon etc. No tripod, but not bad. She had a lot of great questions about astronomy etc. and I was glad to hear it.

Their uncle and aunt are professional photographers, so she had fun showing off her hand-held moonshots.

[Ash]

One of mine finds it fun to compose and shoot with the K-x I had and now the K-r, and comes up with some good results on green or P modes.