tbh, Camp Snap sounds like the best choice for this use case. It's cheap, with long battery life, a real viewfinder and decoration-friendly for kids.
I'd never heard of these, they're very pretty. What's the image quality like?
Fujifilm X half: Is it the perfect family camera?
51–60 of 99 posts
Re: Fujifilm X half: Is it the perfect family camera?
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Photography nerds rarely bring this up but pretty obviously the best camera for kids is an old smartphone. A 2020-era iphone has a better sensor and is cheaper than this thing, assuming they don't already have one around. Photo transfer problem is solved, and the interface is already familiar to kids for better or worse.
That's what we did. Most "kids cameras" sold today just use cheap webcam sensors (e.g. 1 MP, low dynamic range) that are sold for excessively high prices. They have few physical controls, no viewfinder, and are bulky. Instead, why not grab a used iPhone SE, the camera sensor is still fantastic, and it will likely cost you less than most kids cameras. Remove everything except the Camera App, leave it in Airplane mode,…
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Re: Fujifilm X half: Is it the perfect family camera?
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Photography nerds rarely bring this up but pretty obviously the best camera for kids is an old smartphone. A 2020-era iphone has a better sensor and is cheaper than this thing, assuming they don't already have one around. Photo transfer problem is solved, and the interface is already familiar to kids for better or worse.
Folks who are into photography and want to introduce it to their family/kids want to gently introduce the skills of photography while enabling their interest in taking pictures. Smartphones are great at just "taking pictures" but don't offer a lot of creative input. Table stakes like depth-of-field and color balance are either impossible to configure or very difficult on a smartphone. Controlling exposure is very dif…
Kids point and shoot cameras have none of those features. In fact, an old smartphone has far more photographic controls than almost any kid's camera will.
If the choice is a $50 Kid's purpose built camera or a smartphone, the smartphone is the clear winner. Nobody was suggesting an old smartphone over an $800+ Fuji.
You have to have used a kid's point & shoot to understand how terrible they truly are. My kids had one which couldn't even disable the flash entirely. The sensor is a cheap 1 MP out of a webcam. The modes are three: Photo, Video, and Review. There is no manual controls, no photographic tools, maybe MAYBE you might get some fun filters.
Re: Fujifilm X half: Is it the perfect family camera?
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
He says he doesn't collect cameras but instead he sells them. My take is that the bottom tranche of cheap cameras is awful but that you have a huge selection of used cameras on Ebay, in his shoes I would have expected to get something used but good for $200 or so. One of the reasons I go around with two Sonys in my backpack is that I can go to an event and take action shots while I put the other body with a 90mm lens…
Do you let guests shoot the 90mm in full auto mode? Personally I've found that the general population has a really hard time operating a camera. My partner and I can both do photography though I'm more serious about it and we frequently travel with cameras. When we want someone else to take pictures, even on Auto mode I find others have a hard time. If we're in a hurry and want a picture taken by someone else we just…
Usually it would be aperture priority (f/2.8) in a situation where I know what the light is so I can set the ISO and leave it there. I develop with DxO so I am not worried about noise or the shutter speed too long but I do worry about hitting 1/8000 sec -- so usually it would be a situation where the lighting is predictable.
The autofocus can be set in a mode where it will reliably lock on the subject's eye. I would demo how you have to be a certain distance to get a headshot, since it is a prime lens, if they are too far away I don't worry too much because modern cameras have a lot of pixels.
Re: Fujifilm X half: Is it the perfect family camera?
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Folks who are into photography and want to introduce it to their family/kids want to gently introduce the skills of photography while enabling their interest in taking pictures. Smartphones are great at just "taking pictures" but don't offer a lot of creative input. Table stakes like depth-of-field and color balance are either impossible to configure or very difficult on a smartphone. Controlling exposure is very dif…
Kids point and shoot cameras have none of those features. In fact, an old smartphone has far more photographic controls than almost any kid's camera will. If the choice is a $50 Kid's purpose built camera or a smartphone, the smartphone is the clear winner. Nobody was suggesting an old smartphone over an $800+ Fuji. You have to have used a kid's point & shoot to understand how terrible they truly are. My kids had one…
Right I'm not talking about a kid-specific point-and-shoot. There's lots of used point-and-shoots on eBay of varying quality from the 2000s and there's still some compacts being built now, though those tend to be marketed toward vlogging.
Re: Fujifilm X half: Is it the perfect family camera?
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just a word of warning, thermal printer paper has dangerous levels of BPA.
Is that actually true? There are millions of cashiers in the US who handle receipts all day. Is the BPA exposure causing problems for them?
Yes it is, a few businesses such as Walgreens are moving to replace it over the next few years.
https://www.pca.state.mn.us/business-with-us/bpa-and-bps-in-...
https://www.pca.state.mn.us/business-with-us/bpa-and-bps-in-...
https://www.pca.state.mn.us/business-with-us/bpa-and-bps-in-...
Re: Fujifilm X half: Is it the perfect family camera?
#57Re: Fujifilm X half: Is it the perfect family camera?
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that actually true? There are millions of cashiers in the US who handle receipts all day. Is the BPA exposure causing problems for them?
Yes it is, a few businesses such as Walgreens are moving to replace it over the next few years. https://www.pca.state.mn.us/business-with-us/bpa-and-bps-in-... https://www.pca.state.mn.us/business-with-us/bpa-and-bps-in-... https://www.pca.state.mn.us/business-with-us/bpa-and-bps-in-...
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Re: Fujifilm X half: Is it the perfect family camera?
#59ignoring the silly locked vertical aspect ratio, the samples shots are awful. The clipped highlights in the left corner or first picture look worse than an iPhone's. Assume that's Fuji's poorly-applied film emulation making the picture of the running track look muddy and terrible
I doubt that it does any advanced HDR stuff like modern phones do so it's going to clip unless exposure is controlled. It's a shame that in this day and age camera companies can't achieve as great instant results as modern phones even though they have much larger sensors and better optics.
Re: Fujifilm X half: Is it the perfect family camera?
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
My thoughts exactly. This is a bizarre article. The elephant in the room is on the lower end most mid-range phones will beat a digital camera under 300$. I wouldn't give a kid an expensive camera. Kids drop things. If you give Junior an 850$ camera and he loses it that's on you. Then again, this is HN. Maybe he makes 700k TC per year and money is no object. Even then he admits for a few hundred more you can get a muc…
This picks apart image quality from an iPhone 15 Pro Max regarding noise and usable dynamic range: https://youtu.be/bSm3LXNF7pI?feature=shared&t=1360 For anything more than basic software-processed output and utility snaps or selfies, this high-end phone loses pretty terribly to an average hybrid consumer camera.
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