Despite a raging hangover and experiencing the joys of having to tidy my wrecked flat earlier in the day, somehow yesterday afternoon I managed to spend a few hours teaching my friend's eight year old son (Alfie) how to use a thirty five mm SLR camera.
During my previous visit to their house, Alfie had waxed lyrical about how he was the chief photographer of his school's newspaper whilst showing me some great shots of swans in his local park, his dog and his Mum and Dad on his new point and shoot digital camera. My ancient Centon (no, I've not heard of them either) SLR that was my trusty steed throughout college had been sat gathering dust on my desk for the past three years and it clearly could do with a better home. It was his sisters' fifth and sixth birthdays last week, so he was probably feeling hard done by on the presents front.. So, the girls got Hello Kitty bits and Alfredo got a slightly dusty camera.
Trying to explain ISO settings to an eight year old was a bridge too far but he picked up on how to focus, zoom, fire the flash, set the shutter speed and how to load a film. It'll be great for him to learn the complete basics at a young age. His understanding of composition is innate looking at the shots he'd already taken.
In my naivety, I said that he should get a book from the school library on how to use cameras to help him learn, to which I got the response - 'Don't be silly Harry.. I'll just Google it.' How times have changed.
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