Budget Digital Camera recommendations

[DavR]

As part of the general fallout around GDPR, a while ago we changed policy so that staff could no longer use their personal phones in the classroom to take pictures. This is a sensible move IMO, but, it does mean that staff struggle when they need to take pictures.

 

I'm looking to buy some digital cameras for the classroom, but, I have to say the last batch were really disappointing. I thought, given how much camera tech has moved on, we'd be able to get away with some cheap no-name brand cameras, but the feedback hasn't been good.

 

Does anyone have a recommendation for a decent digital camera at around or below the £100 mark?

 

I can get a cheap smartphone for that price with a great camera, but I can't see anything in the standalone camera market to match.

[jmak]

Why not buy the cheap phone? You could then set it up on the school WiFi and set it to automatically save the photos to your network/OneDrive/SharePoint.

[DavR]

It's an option, I guess.

 

We'd probably be buying a few, though, and I'm not sure I want to get into managing another fleet of devices, with all the OS updates and security considerations that come with that.

 

I'd rather have discrete devices, without all the extra phone faff and distraction.

[Dan2025]

As part of the general fallout around GDPR, a while ago we changed policy so that staff could no longer use their personal phones in the classroom to take pictures. This is a sensible move IMO, but, it does mean that staff struggle when they need to take pictures.

 

I'm looking to buy some digital cameras for the classroom, but, I have to say the last batch were really disappointing. I thought, given how much camera tech has moved on, we'd be able to get away with some cheap no-name brand cameras, but the feedback hasn't been good.

 

Does anyone have a recommendation for a decent digital camera at around or below the £100 mark?

 

I can get a cheap smartphone for that price with a great camera, but I can't see anything in the standalone camera market to match.

 

Before my time the strategy in classes was to use a little digital camera but it seemed to run into a lot of issues, still have some now in case of emergency but we've since gone down the route of having 1-2 iPads in classes managed by Jamf.

 

Overkill for just photo taking but they're used for all sorts now. Slowly replacing our old set with new ones but doesn't really matter to much if they can't be updated any further. Quite a lot of ours are stuck at 12.55 but still meet need for basic uses.

[dmj]

Does anyone have a recommendation for a decent digital camera at around or below the £100 mark?

 

 

bunch of second had go-pros https://www.mpb.com/en-uk/product/gopro-hero-4-silver

[DavR]

Before my time the strategy in classes was to use a little digital camera but it seemed to run into a lot of issues, still have some now in case of emergency but we've since gone down the route of having 1-2 iPads in classes managed by Jamf.

 

Overkill for just photo taking but they're used for all sorts now. Slowly replacing our old set with new ones but doesn't really matter to much if they can't be updated any further. Quite a lot of ours are stuck at 12.55 but still meet need for basic uses.

 

This is an option, and would no doubt be a very popular one, iPads still have that desirability factor.

 

I'm not sure I can justify the costs just for the cameras, though. Maybe if we were in the position that we were retiring some, but we work our iPads into the ground before they get that far.

[DavR]

Just a bump, if anyone else has any ideas of good budget digital cameras?

 

We did eventually find a model that we liked, for around the £100 mark, the Kodak FZ102. We bought a couple, tested out fine....... and then they discontinued them

 

Nearest equivalent Kodaks now seem to be £140-£200, which is well out of budget.

[Koldov]

We always struggled with this... but it was the opposite problem!

 

All the teachers had a classroom camera (not expensive, but not really cheap ones either - Sanyo VPC-X1200/Sony DSC-W620).

 

As soon as we got iPads for the classrooms, almost all the teachers ditched the cameras... with various excuses such as battery life (never recharging them doesn't help) and believe or not... quality!

 

I guess it's in the eye of the beholder considering the iPads we got back in the day were iPad mini 2 with a 5 MP camera, the Sanyo were 12.1 MP and the Sony 14.1 MP.... So, they all got 'recycled'.... Still at least now I don't have 100s of ridiculously high res photos being dumped on the server every day!