Fisher Price Kid Tough Digital Camera - Blue
by Fisher Price
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Our Price: $93.00 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $9.85 (click here) Category: Toy See more product details |
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Toys and Games Reviews of Fisher Price Kid Tough Digital Camera - Blue
Customer Review: A terrible camera in a great, tough body
Summary: 2 Stars
I'm an amateur photographer with a camera frequently around my neck. My son has had toy cameras for ages so he could walk around taking pictures just like mommy. He's taken pictures with my DSLR and digital point and shoot and completely understands the concept of a camera. As such, I was very excited to get him his very own camera for his 3rd birthday.
THE PROS:
- This product is very easy for young hands to hold and even easier to operate.
- My 3 year old didn't have any problem figuring out how to turn the camera on, take pictures or delete pictures.
- We haven't had to replace the batteries yet after months of frequent use.
- It is definitely durable! My one year old throws it around all over the place and it's never had a problem operating.
- It takes an SD card so you don't have to rely on paltry on-board memory.
THE CONS:
- 1.3 megapixels. Even my cell phone has a 2 megapixel camera in it. The extra .7 megapixels would've made a huge difference and when even the CHEAPEST digital camera technologies have at least 2 megapixels, there's no reason for a product this expensive to have such a terrible resolution.
For me, the camera is virtually worthless. When I go to download the photos he's taken at the end of the week, I can barely recognize any of them. I wanted to be able to print out his photos and hang them up in his room as his artwork, however you just can't get a good photo out of this camera even if the lighting and composition is perfect.
This product is all about the camera and it sucks. It doesn't matter to me if it's too tough to break when I can't use any of the pictures taken with it anyway. The other Fisher-Price Kid-Tough Digital Camera doesn't even list the megapixels anywhere in the product information. (I think it may be the older version, which only has .3 megapixels!)
I haven't been able to find a preschooler camera with more than the 1.3 megapixels, which again, I find just SHOCKING considering current technology. Might as well just buy a toy camera for less than $5 at Wal-Mart or the dollar store and wait a couple of years until your child is responsible enough to handle a cheap point and shoot. That's what I wish I would've done.
Customer Review: Waste of time & money
Summary: 1 Stars
We bought this camera for our two year old daughter, as she had developed an interest in photography. The box and FP web site had lots of promises about it, unfortunately they neglected to mention its shortcomings. Forget the high quality images you see in the advertisements for this product, it is no SLR.
First off the camera shoots at 640x480, with higher resolution by interpolation. What is interpolation, I hear you asking? The camera fakes having a higher resolution by averaging two neighbouring pixels in the image. This leaves you with a larger image, but it contains no additional information, and will actually lose sharpness.
Secondly, the optical viewfinder is not lined up with the image sensor in the camera. This means that if the child relies on the viewfinder to frame the shot, they are going to cut off heads.
Thirdly, the quality of the LCD is extremely poor. Everything is very dark and washed out.
Fourth, and most importantly, image quality. I took 100 pictures with this camera to test it, in a variety of light situations and both with and without flash. The quality of the images it takes are abysmal. Even with perfect lighting and composition, only about 1 in 10 images will come out looking somewhat reasonable. Chromatic aberration of the lens is extreme, with purple fringing around everything bright. Focus is non-existent, and the flash performance is miserable.
If you want a fake camera for your kid to cary around and pretend to take pictures with, I recommend that route over spending the extra money and getting this camera. If you are after pictures that you can print out and stick on the refrigerator or show off to your friends, you won't find them here. You want your child to enjoy the photography experience, not learn the meaning of disappointment when the image they took of the puppy doesn't turn out. Unless you are into life lessons.
Save your money & buy the kid something you won't be returning next week.
Customer Review: kid tough digital camera
Summary: 3 Stars
"Santa" brought this camera for our 3 year old son. We were excited for him to have it because he could be a little rough, as boys are, and it wouldn't break. To my surprise he was very gentle with it. He's dropped it a couple of times on accident, but it still worked fine. It was very easy for him to use. He could hold it up and look at the screen (as grown-ups do) or he could look through the double eye views to see his picture. He learned how to review the pictures, delete them and turn the camera on and off by himself.
The picture quality is great for a toddler camera. I think when most people get this they expect the same quality as their own camera. Keep in mind this is for a toddler, who doesn't care what the picture looks like, they just want to take them.
The camera holds about 60 pictures. I have a cheap 512mb SD card which holds more than enough for him to go crazy with pictures.
My computer picks up the camera as soon as I plug it in (I have windows Vista). I have no problems downloading the pictures (I think if people do it's a user problem not a camera problem).
The flash does make the pictures really bright, and I have found that the best distance for taking pictures is around 3-4 feet away.
We have had our camera for 7 months now and the flash doesn't work. The symbol for the flash indicates that it is ready, and even in a dark setting there is no flash. I would like to see a little more customer support available on these matters.
I know others who have this camera and they don't have this problem, so it might just be this one (which is not unheard of).
Overall, if you are looking for a camera for your 3-5 year old I would say, get it. It's kid friendly, the size is perfect for little hands, it's easy to use and with the aid of a cheap SD card they can take hundreds of pictures at a time. Battery life is great, and the screen resolution is fine for a kid (they can tell what they took a picture of).
Customer Review: Worth buying
Summary: 4 Stars
We bought this without expecting too much (after having problems with a cheaper camera), and this is a good camera for young children 3+
What's good?
- physical Design makes it easy to look through and hold, robust construction,
- Simple contols, kids easily learned the User Interface and how to take photos. Has simple sounds as well that accompony power on/off, shutter
- the one we bought took a standard 128MB SD card which provides heaps of storage for photos of this size
- no PC drivers required - mounts as a standard USB storage device
Needs improvement:
- picture quality - its OK, but very basic. Sort of 1MP phone quality.
- rear display - fairly poor, but workable.
- Some troubles getting it detected by WinXP on our notebook, but with repititon it worked
Overall:
- Great learning toy for the kids to figure out what photography is. They copy what adults do, and this is a great way to learn. They have learnt if you take lots of pictures, you have to sort through them and delete the cruddy ones. How to compose a photo. And they learn about composing photos and what photos look like if you just press the shutter button at any time.
The picture quality is only part of it - it is the overall experience that matters. The simple User Interface and durable design mean that this is a toy that kids should get some life out of. Reccomended (though a higher picture quality version would be nice!).
Note: - there is a high quality mode which needs to be turned on. Press both arrow keys and press the shutter button which turns on a cross hatched pattern symbol in the lower left of the display. Pictures instead of being 640 x 480 are 1280 x 960. I don't know whether this is a higher quality or just interpolated, but it looks worthwhile having.
Customer Review: Great Camera for the Little Ones
Summary: 4 Stars
After spending a lot of time researching digital cameras for little kids, we decided on the Kid Tough camera. The downside to buying a camera rugged enough for a young child is that the resolutions are terrible. At least the KT camera rates at 1 megapixel, unlike several others that have .3 megapixels which is borderline pointless. Because of the lower resolutions, the pictures are comparable to cell photo photos, but that's been perfectly peachy for us so far.
There is no question that the camera is rugged - it has already been dropped about 20 times and still works like new. Hooking it up to my Mac or my husband's PC has been very easy (although be aware the creativity software is PC only).
Here are the negatives:
1. The flash is way too bright, and it overexposed almost every photo. We fixed this by taking a small square of a paper towel and placing it over the flash with a piece of clear packing tape. It works beautifullly as a diffuser.
2. The delete button is too easy for little kids to hit. In future versions, FP should make it very difficult for little kids to delete pictures. Let mom and dad do the deleting.
3. Would it kill any of these manufacturers to make software Mac compatible?
All in all, I would definitely recommend the camera to any parent looking for a rugged camera for their toddler/young elementary aged kids.