Perfect Camera for Beginners and Kids

My daughter received the Nikon Coolpix L11 Digital Camera as a gift from a beloved Aunt. She was absolutely thrilled to receive it because she was always borrowing someone else's camera to snap away photos. She happens to have a good eye and takes lovely pictures, especially for a kid! Now about this particular camera...

It is an inexpensive, about $119, and is a point and shoot digital camera. The nice thing about it is that you can just take it out of the box, attach the strap, insert the 2 double AA batteries, and go. You also might want to buy another memory card so that the camera will hold more photos. It comes with a pathetic 7MB (holds like 5 pictures) so get 256MB or even 1 or 2 GB and you'll never run out of storage space on this camera. Since I had a 1GB memory card, my daughter took it out of the box and started snapping away, until ...

There is one very big drawback about this camera and that is that it literally eats the two required double AA batteries almost instantly. It wears out the batteries so quickly that I literally thought that there was something wrong with the camera so I called the Nikon 1-800 number and was told to try rechargeable batteries which has somewhat helped the problem. This is a costly and very frustrating problem nonetheless. Right when you are about to take that perfect shot, this camera seems to know and that battery gives out at that very moment with little to no warning. Not so good.

The picture quality is good, even can be considered great for outdoor photography, and the photos print with crisp, bright and clear colors. For indoor shots, make sure the lighting is good or the pictures will be disappointing.

This camera also functions as a video camera, a feature that my daughter adores. So much so that I had to sit down with her to explain that not everybody likes to be captured on video all of the time. Especially me before my morning coffee...She now knows to ask permission before rolling the film! The quality of the video is a bit grainy, but it is easy to get the movie images up onto the television or computer screen and it has provided our family with hours of hilarious fun.

So, this is a cheap, easy to use, point and shoot camera. It is easy to get to see the pictures on the tv or computer screen and the quality of the 4x6 photos print out just fine. Be sure to buy a memory card and either lots of Double AA batteries or rechargeable ones and you'll enjoy this little lightweight portable digital camera. It makes a good first introduction to digital photography for both kids and adults.