Looking at major retailers’ best sellers is often the first sign of an emerging trend in the camera industry – but a number of the best-selling cameras on Amazon sit in an unusual category: kids cameras.
Two of Amazon US’s top ten best-selling cameras right now are kid cameras, but shift to the instant camera category, and eight out of ten are built for kids. Amazon UK shows a similar trend, with one kid camera making the top ten, but the instant camera category is overwhelmingly filled with kid cameras.
Amazon's best-seller lists tend to lean more towards cheap cameras than photo retailers, but the number of kid cameras on the list is still an interesting insight.
As both a pro photographer and a parent, my kids started with camera-shaped teethers and worked their way up to fully functioning cameras. Yes, giving my kids cameras has meant a lot of lo-fi shots of toes, blurry photos of the dog, and lots of photos that I lovingly call “abstract art.”
But giving a kid a camera isn’t about getting high-quality photos that hang on a wall. Photography is the art of noticing things – and giving a kid a camera helps teach the next generation to slow down and observe their surroundings. When I gave my 6-year-old a compact camera inside a botanical garden, he photographed “all the pretty things” which, in his mind, included dandelions and shadows.
Beyond teaching my kids observation and sharing one of my biggest passions with them, I love kid cameras for a much more practical reason – kids are less bored with a camera in hand. When I take my kids on a short hike or a walk outside, I tend to hear less whining about boredom and tired feet when said walk is a photo walk.
Kid cameras don’t have to be expensive. In fact, kid cameras probably shouldn’t be super expensive because, well kids tend to drop things and leave toys on the floor. The cost of the cameras that I hand over to my kids increases slightly with age and responsibility and range from a screen-free cheap compact camera to my old entry-level DSLR (read: a free DSLR).
The most expensive camera that I bought for kids was for my son who was a pre-teen at the time – the previous generation of the OM System Tough TG-7 – and the camera was a waterproof, drop proof compact camera that I knew I would also borrow for beach days.
The other thing I love about the kid camera trend? Many of the best-selling kid cameras are instant cameras that also print out photos. My pre-teen decorates her room with Instax prints on a string light clip and while the cheap thermal printer variety seems to be the most popular, real instant film teaches a bit of patience and delayed gratification too.
(My only word of warning on those cheap kid cameras with thermal printers? Give them a place to keep those photos, or you’ll end up with receipt paper photos littered throughout the house, which is almost as bad as the time I thought it would be a good idea to buy a toddler not yet capable of picking up his own toys a ball pit.)
There are a lot of things that I regret buying for my kids – loud toys and toys with 1,000 pieces included. But I haven’t yet regretted buying my kids a camera – or recycling a hand-me-down camera either.
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