What a great idea right? Build a tough camera that little Johnny or Janey can bang around. Make the buttons really big and colorful. Add some camera games and snap, you have a kids camera. Oh, you forgot about the taking picture part. 1.3 mega-pixels. Plenty, right? Small, fuzzy LCD’s. No problem right? Wrong. 

While looking for a digital camera for my children, I found two that led the pack and were available everywhere, the Fisher-Price Kid-Tough Digital Camera and VTech’s Kidizoom Digital Camera. Both were fun and colorful. Both offered 1.3 mega-pixel resolutions and both were built “kid tough.”  This all sounds good, but after looking at specs and reading all the reviews, I have concluded that both are so bad that I’m going to wait until next year. Basically it came down to this. The Vtech Kidizoom takes horrible pictures. Just awful. And, the Fisher-Price, while its picture quality was slightly better, had design flaws such as an easy way to delete pictures, lousy LCD, and gender specific coloring.

This year, Santa is going to have to find something different to put under the tree. Hopefully the picture will be bright and clear next year.

To see an in-depth review complete with sample pictures, go over to ZRecs.com.

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Picture this: Your kids have just spelled out “WE LOVE U GRANDMA” in the back yard using your potted plants and garden tools. You hear them yelling, “BRING THE CAMERA! WE NEED TO TAKE A PICTURE!” You grab your trusty digital shooter and bound to the back door. There they are, arm in arm standing right behind their creation. “Mom’s going to love this” you think to yourself. You start snapping away. First, some, more formal shots, and then everyone gets crazy, laying on their sides, voguing like models, and piling on top of one another. Then all of a sudden you realize, she can see these pictures right now. You call her on the phone and tell her to go to your Flickr site and snap, there they are. How cool. The pictures were uploaded, right from your camera to your online photo sharing site, all while still taking them and all without any extra effort. 

The Eye-Fi is an SD card which can hold up to 2GB worth of photos and has built in Wi-Fi capabilities. With these capabilities, your camera is connected to your Wi-Fi network and pictures can be sent automatically to your computer or to your online photo sharing site like Flickr, SmugMug, and Picasa Albums among many others. Eye-Fi is $99 and can be found where SD cards are sold.

Some things to think about:

1. Unedited photos - If you’re like me, you like to edit your pictures before allowing the rest of the world, or grandma, to see them. If you have the pictures automatically go to your online photo sharing site, they will appear without edits.
2. Public Wi-Fi networks - Because the Eye-Fi has to be paired with a network ahead of time, don’t think that you will be taking pictures at a park and having the public, city Wi-Fi network beam them up to your online photo sharing site. There are ways of taking your Eye-Fi capabilities on the road with you, but it involves a portable router.

This is really a breakthrough product that will change the way you get pictures from your camera to your computer and online photo site. Go forth, take pictures, and share.

Cameras gadgets SD Card Wi Fi

Through seven years and a buyout by Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) in May ‘07, the digital photography research site DPReview.com remains the standard when it comes to comprehensive information, examples, and opinion. Yes, there are others like ConsumerReview.com and Cnet, and yes they are helpful, but no substantial camera purchase should be made without reading through the review at DPReview.com.

Beware, the amount of detail can be overwhelming. If you find that you are not in the mood to understand the finer points of ISO or the reasons for three different types of shutter lag, at least read the conclusion and rating, view any samples they publish and see the pricing from various retailers. You’ll be glad you did.

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