Twenty Dollar Cameras

C took this picture with her $20 camera

About a year ago, just before I sent my girls to Texas on vacation with my mom and sister, I bought them $20 digital cameras at the grocery store. I knew they liked to take pictures, and I figured they might want to create some of their own memories while they were away. Still, I wasn't even remotely ready to drop a significant amount of money on a high-quality tool they might very well end up breaking the first day it came out of the box.

This is not a review. If it were, though, I would tell you that they are exactly as terrible as you probably expected. They can only take 21 pictures before they need to be hooked up to my computer via a stupid USB cable I can never find (that doesn't match anything else I own). The pictures always have weird little artifacts and a pretty low resolution. The view screen is a joke, though I'm pretty surprised they even have one. And you can't access the pictures without their junky software. 

All of that aside, I'm still glad I bought them. 

S took this picture with her $20 camera

They're small, they haven't been broken yet, and despite their limitations, the girls have managed to take some pretty neat pictures with them. The learning curve has been interesting, too. S now tells me when the room is too dark to get a good picture, and they've discovered, completely on their own, how to sort through their pictures and delete the ones they don't want to free up space. M's pictures still come out blurry and weird, but she's still really enjoying her picture-taking freedom. Now, I'm considering getting them something a bit nicer for trips to the zoo or vacations with the family.