"Santa" got my daughter a Kodak Easyshare last year when she was 7. I don't remember the model or anything. It runs on AA batteries (a BIG plus for a point and shoot - you can find them everywhere, and don't have to worry about chargers and the like). Get a big memory card - 8gb or so, and they can shoot forever. My wife just got a little nikon s3100, and with an 8gb card it will hold 1600 photos.
The easy share is a bit big, good for small hands that need something to hold onto.
Don't fall for the megapixel hype! More does not equal better. Megapixels sell cameras, thats it. Is was a big deal when cameras went from .4mp to 2mp... but these tiny point and shoot things with 14, are really no better than when they had 8 or 10. the improvements in processing time and dynamic range are the big things, NOT megapixels.
She might do well with a camera with a lot of "scene" modes. So she doesn't have to fiddle with shutter speeds and apertures and such, a lot of P/S cameras come with built in pre-programmed "scene" settings - i.e. sports (fast shutter speed), fireworks (long exposure times), portrait (hightens flesh tones), landscape (saturate blues and greens so skies and trees look better), back lit (fires the flash so shadows disappear), etc. etc.
For the love of GOD - do NOT install the easy share software on your PC. It will take over your computer worse than AOL ever did. Throw the disc out. No - break it in half, then throw it out. Maybe burn it.
Just plug the camera in and drag the pictures over. You don't need special software to deal with flash-based cameras.
Windows will handle all the printing pretty easily. You can even go to wal-mart.com photo section, upload and print directly from the house, just go to
walmart and pick them up the next day. Given the price of ink, it might be just as cheap to let walmart do it for you.
You get out what goes in - so if she tilts it at a weird angle, thats what you are going to get, but the nice thing is memory is cheap, and you can delete the crappy pictures. She can also see what she is doing, and hopefully will learn what makes a good picture, and a bad one.
Im not sure what kind of software is out there to do image manipulation. I use photoshop, which is pricey for beginners, and way overcomplicated. The kodak disc might have some on there, but i don't know, because after installing the beast at work, I decided to never let it touch my computer at home.
You might want something that lets you crop, remove redeye, fix white balance, color correct and fix saturation, etc.
Look at the adobe stuff - if you have a friend thats a teacher they can get BIG discounts on things like photoshop elements - $69 i think for a $300 program.... Just ask them to buy it for you. I love teachers....
There's something called light room too, but I don't know much about it.
IF you have an iPad - photoshop has a free version that will do some pretty basic stuff like cropping and fixing brightness, contrast, tone, etc. Theres another app called filter storm that will let you do other stuff, and even add text over the top of pictures. I use it on the go to watermark my images (just check my blog and you'll see a few with watermarks) before posting them places.
photography is a fun hobby, glad to see you getting her a camera. Unlike the film days, all your screw-ups don't cost a thing...
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