[Leica] Kids' cameras

[Bill Bain <BBain@IMNET.com>]

There are many, many cameras that one can give a kid.  My experience
with my own children is that a P&S is not necessarily a good idea.  One
of our "house" P&S is an original Nikon One-Touch, and the motor drive
causes way too many snapshots of too little thought for our tastes
(although it's a nice basic P&S with a dogogne good lens).  I gave my
son (13) a Zeiss Contina IIa and my daughter (10) is using a Retina
IIIc, which she thinks is "cute", but  nontheless both are very capable
cameras with a "feel" that you won't get from most of today's cameras.
Plus I have less than $150 in the both of them!  My son is angling for a
"real RF" and I think he's going to wind up with a Canon 7 with my
thread mount f1.2 on it.  While not a Leica, it's still high quality
stuff (well, maybe not the lens) and pretty affordable and usable,
particularly with the built in meter.  Of course, I may pass along my M3
kit at some point (eye surgery makes it hard for me to focus, which is
why I'm using my Canon Elan IIe more and more), but if he wants to go
SLR, he'll have a pretty decent understanding of why to use an SLR over
a RF because he'll have plenty of exposure to the RF world.