I love gadgets. I love electronics. I love photography and capturing my kids’ every moments! How are you capturing your Summer vacation? What about your kids? How are they capturing their time off of school? GE has a nice line of Digital Cameras and I wanted to share with you our experience with the GE Digital Camera A1455 from the Smart Series collection.
A digital camera encourages kids to create the ultimate “What I Did On My Summer Vacation” memories. Whether your summer plans take you far away or keep you close to home, here are tips from the GE brand of digital cameras to help children embrace their inner shutterbug.
- Show kids how to enable the camera’s Auto Scene Detection feature. This will help them avoid overexposed or blurry images and easily capture clear shots during a bright, sunny day or even a fireworks display.
- Tell them to look for vibrant colors, which make for beautiful photographs and striking scrapbooks to share at school. Think of a carousel horse against a sea of lights or a bright flower in front of a white picket fence.
- When photographing a group of friends or the family, encourage kids to take one nice photo and another that’s crazy and goofy. If someone closes his eyes during the serious shot, Blink Detection alerts budding photogs to take another picture before everyone runs off.
- Encourage kids to watch for things growing out of a subject’s head, like a beach umbrella or tiki torch. While these distracting backgrounds are funny, they also take away from a great shot.
- Panoramic pictures capture the vastness of a seaside sunset or large group of people. Features like Pan-Capture Panorama make it easy for the kids to create these elongated shots by stitching the image for them; all they have to do is pan the camera across the scene.
- Waterproof cameras are ideal for a day at the pool, beach or lake. Select one with an internal zoom lens to keep it clean from sand, seaweed and water drops. Waterproof cameras are also great for snapping fun pics in the rain!
Capturing your favorite moments has never been easier – or more within reach. Each of these sleek cameras is loaded with the intuitive features you need to make beautiful photography a cinch because everyone likes a smart value.
- Pan-Capture Panorama
Wide-view photos are produced by panning the camera across to create a seamless panoramic picture. - Face Detection
Face Detection automatically focuses and optimizes exposure for sharp, brilliant pictures. - Auto Scene Detection
Automatically determines the appropriate scene type and optimizes exposure for sharp, vibrant pictures. - Image Stabilization
Overcomes camera shake to help you take clearer, sharper pictures. - Blink Detection
Blink Detection alerts you if a subject’s eyes were closed so you can immediately retake the picture. - In-Camera Red-Eye Removal
Remove red-eye immediately while viewing images on the LCD. - Smile Detection
The shutter automatically releases when the smile appears so you can capture smiles the moment they happen. - Auto Adjust Brightness LCD
The LCD screen adjusts to the existing lighting conditions so you can frame your subject properly.
Here are some pros and cons, from my own opinion:
Pros:
- This could be a pro, but could also be a con – the A1455 uses AA batteries, verses your standard digital camera rechargeable battery. To me, this can be a con because it weighs the camera down a bit more than a camera battery (which are usually thin and lightweight), but the good thing is that you don’t need a charger for the A1455 and you can use rechargeable batteries.
- The megapixels are at an impressive 14.1. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this high of a megapixel on a portable camera. You have the option to shoot in different sizes, so you are able to take more pictures with your memory card, or less – depending on the size of image that you prefer. (14, 12, 10, 8, 5, 3 or .3 Megapixels) The larger the megapixel, the less images will fit on your memory card. If you plan on printing large size images, this is a great option to have.
- While I rarely use a zoom on any camera (self preference), the zoom is nice on this camera. It is 5X and takes pretty nice zoomed in pictures.
- The menu is easy to navigate around in.
- The screen is a nice, visible size, (2.7 inches) so no squinting when you are navigating around the menu or viewing taken pictures.
Cons:
- If you are looking for a small, thin, compact digital camera, this is not for you. This is a pretty thick camera, so don’t expect to keep it stowed away in a pocket.
- The A1455 is heavier than I expected.
Here are some pictures that the kids and I shot with the A1455. These are all straight out of the camera, with the exception of resizing for this post & adding in the watermark.
Tucker took this one of Milano 
The flash is nice and if you use the camera without the flash, it takes nice natural light pictures as well.
I wouldn’t give this to my little ones (ages 2 1/2 & 5) as their starter camera due to it’s size, weight and price range. With the SD memory card that is used with it, it is very easy to pop the card out and insert in to my computer. The pictures come right up. If you don’t have a SD memory card slot, you can always use the USB cable that is included in the box. Overall, this is a nice camera, takes nice pictures and videos and the price is reasonable.
To help kids create memories with their very own camera this summer, Sears, Kmart and Walmart.com offer a wide range of affordable choices for aspiring photographers. You can find more information about the A1455 on the GE website and it is priced just under $120.00.
Mommy Goggles gives this product:
Rating: 
Why this rating? This is a star rating (1-5) that is based off our opinion on the product itself, use, wear & tear, price and how it fits in to our family’s lives (at home or on the go).
All opinions in this posting are 100% my own.
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