Keep kids busy with digital cameras

Don’t know what to do with your boy for the summer?

Can’t afford to send your girl to camp at $150 per three-day session but want something creative for her to do on the break from school?

Here’s what you do.

Give them cameras. Digital cameras.

Nearly every electronics and department store has them these days, and they’re less than the lunch money you’d have to dish out for camp. Not to mention that the kids will have more to show for themselves than a chocolate-stained T-shirt or the ketchup drippings on their sneakers.

I just got my son Ed the Concord Eye-Q 2040, with 2.0 megapixels and a 4x digital zoom. Now, it’s not going to be the camera for you if you’re already into digital photography and know, for instance, that there’s a big difference between a 4x digital zoom and a 4x optical zoom (Digital is the image size blown up 4 times; optical is the through-the-lens length — go for the optical zoom).

But for a 6-year-old embarking on a summer-long project, well …

And it’s also got video capability and is compatible with Mac OS 9 and higher and Windows XP, so what the heck.

Although there are probably cheaper models than the 2040, I liked this one because a neighbor bought it at Christmas and, although his child has beaten the heck out of it, it’s still alive. The neighbor paid $49.99 on sale, and I forked over $99.99, but I figure it’s worth it to teach kids the basics.

And speaking of basics, that’s what this is all about, really — teaching them how to hold a camera, how to look at things through a viewfinder, how to be aware of lighting and how to release the shutter at the right moment.

If you’re like me, I’m thinking that summer break definitely has to be more than Yu-Gi-Oh cards and “Fairly Odd Parents.” So I’ve challenged Ed to document his time off (You just said, “I’m so sure — he’s 6!”). Have you given your kids your camera? Have you looked at how they see this world of ours?

Aside from seeing everything from a bit closer to the ground, they have an incredibly innocent view of things.

I hooked Ed’s 2040 up to my laptop the other day to see what he thought was important.

There were nearly 100 images of everything from his bed, his closet, the dog dish, the cat, his bike to some incredibly wonderful self-portraits. (There also were 20-plus images of the TV screen and whatever happened to be playing on Nick Jr. at the time.)

The cool thing was that he quickly became interested in something creative, and I got an insight into how he views the world.

You also have to consider how you are going to view these images.

You can download most to your computer via a card reader. Or you can connect the camera to the computer, and that’s cool for kids because they can see the images instantly.

There are any number of programs available to help them learn about layout and how to put words and pictures together. MyPublisher BookMaker makes book-making as simple as downloading the images and dropping them into formatted pages. For a small price, you can have a hardbound summer journal in three to five days.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 has a free download for slide shows on its Digital Kids Club Web site and offers for $40 a complete kit that includes calendar-making, albums, slide shows, cards and everything the kids will need for the summer.

If you don’t have a computer, take the card with the images to your drugstore or discount store and have them scanned into whatever format works best. A journal can still be pretty kid-cool with regular prints and handwritten entries.

For those of you who don’t believe in digital photography, film cameras are rock-bottom cheap, and the same journal can be produced with film. You just can’t view the results as quickly.

With film cameras, you might consider the underwater throwaways. You can find them by turning around in most checkout aisles. They take decent pictures for up to 10 feet or so. At any given time last summer, we had two or three floating around the pool — until the dog ate them.

So get out there and buy some cameras, and start the summer and that little person off right.

By August, you’ll have a junior Ansel Adams on your hands. And think of all that wall space you’ll fill up.