avocado8

A Camera For the Beaner

The Beaner has his own film camera (a cheap-o model purchased at Walgreens for about $8, which includes a free film refill every time we bring in a roll from it for developing), and I've given him disposables to shoot with, too. As for digital cameras, he has two or three toy ones, all of which produce images of perfectly horrible quality (the ones I'm able to download off of, anyway; one refuses to connect to any computer we have). I thought they might be fun for me to shoot with, but unlike toy film cameras, these have no redeeming qualities... aside from durability, in the case of the rubber-padded Diego camera.

The Beaner often borrows my Canon point & shoot when we're out having coffee, and he's gotten proficient at switching between closeup and distance mode. He's also getting better at holding the camera still; he'll shake it occasionally, or forget to switch modes and end up with something completely out of focus, but sometimes he'll get the settings, lighting, and steadiness just right and produce something really cool. He even managed to switch to video mode on his own the other day and got this great clip (the shot of the sign at the end was an accidental—though brilliant, if I do say so myself—addition by me):

Anyway, all this is to say that I decided to use a bit of a recent windfall to buy the Beaner a real digital camera of his own. I got him a relatively inexpensive model—I chose a Canon over a higher-end, on-sale-for-about-the-same-price Nikon because I figured many of the controls would be the same as or similar to the ones on mine, and thus familiar—but it's definitely real and breakable and something that grownups would use.

Of course, now that there will be more "takenbythebeaner" photos, I thought it was also time to open a Flickr account for him. I didn't want gazillions of photos of his Lightning McQueen bowls and plates polluting my stream, and I want him to get proper credit for his ace shots. (Side note: The Flickr/Yahoo! sign-up-a-minor process isn't nearly as smooth as it should be.)

His account is mostly hidden, and his photos are viewable only by Friends and Family for now, but I'll share a few here from time to time. We're already planning a photowalk together, so I imagine there'll be more to share soon.

photo by the beaner