How to prevent a child from accidentally deleting photos during playback?

Question

I own a nikon D60 and have recently upgraded to a nikon D750. There are lots of things in the D750 to prevent accidental misconfiguration of some settings (like a small lock on the P-S-A-M dialer) that the D60 didn't have, and that's nice. But one thing that seems to me that is very important and it is in the same state in both models is the deletion of photos. You press the 'trash' button and it asks you for confirmation, and press it again and voilà, your photo is gone.

I have expected that to remove a photo you should do something a little more difficult than pressing the same button twice.

As maybe some of you may be guessing, the problem is with my son. We usually let him hold the camera while we playback the photos and let him press right or left to view another photo. He is very young (2yo) and still doesn't understand what each button do. He instead keeps pressing all buttons while yelling 'button! button!'. And sometimes he accidentally deletes a photo or two. I don't want to punish him nor take the camera away from him because he doesn't still know that he is doing something wrong.

So all this introduction is to just ask the following question: How can I let my child play with the camera and be sure that he won't delete any photo? Is there any setting to change the behavior of the trash button, or to auto-protect a photo just after taking it?

_{note: for those concerned with the integrity of the D750: No, I won't let him play with the camera for the moment, but when the moment arrives I want to be prepared.}

Answer 1

Nikon cameras (at least my D300 and D7100) have a lock button. Pressing this button will protect an image from accidental deletion. Review an image on your camera and press the lock button (the one with a key symbol) to protect the image..

Alternatively, you can setup your camera to make a backup copy on the second memory card. Deleting an image, is only done from the one card. The camera does not delete images from both cards at the same time.

Answer 2

Locking the memory card (with the little slider) should do it. Rene's second-card solution seems good too, but I'd worry that with buttons being pressed quickly at random, it'd be easy to delete all or even format the card.

An even better approach might be to use an eyefi card to automatically upload your photos as they are taken. That way, it doesn't matter if they are deleted from the camera. (The D750 has built-in wifi — awesome — but it doesn't seem to have a feature where photos are uploaded automatically or continuously. You could, of course, just make sure to do it before handing the camera over.)b

Personally, I'd just suggest not letting the kid have control. It's not punishment to not let a toddler have everything they want. My nine-year-old wants the car keys, and it's not punishment to tell her no. :)

Answer 3

I'm going to suggest a different path: teach him to use the camera. My son went through the same excitement about pushing each button multiple times, and one time I had to do a full reset because I couldn't figure out how to undo some of the things he changed! My son had the camera in front of him since, well, he was born. I quickly figured out that when letting him look at the photos during playback I should cover the left and right controls except for the directional control to navigate the photos. (A secure grip on the camera is never a bad idea anyway.) I'm sure I was trying to direct him on how to use the camera before he had any idea what the camera was (let alone that the buttons could do things) and helping his little fingers to press only the buttons I wanted him to touch definitely worked to promote the idea that these were the buttons he should press. (And keeping wipes handy to get the drool off of my precious camera!)

Of course, in addition to looking at photos we practiced looking through the viewfinder a lot and learned how to press the shutter release. Taking photos is a lot of fun, and even a two year old will be excited to participate in the process, take his own photos, and then get to see them on the back of the camera. (Tangent: it's easy to have a small kid participate in this process with digital because of how immediately rewarding it is. I can't imagine this process being anywhere near as easy, fun, or influential at such a young age with film.)

I can't remember exactly how old my son was when he hit his photography milestones (is that even a thing?) but I'm sure that by two he was navigating playback and excited to mimic both of his camera-toting parents by putting a camera to his face. And I do remember one time shortly after he turned three when he announced he saw something he wanted to take a photo of when I didn't have the camera out, though he needed help to remember which buttons to press to use the camera. Now, at nearly five, my D800 and 35mm are still far too heavy for him to lift to his eye on his own, but he knows the viewfinder and shutter button well, as well as how to navigate photos on his own. After the fact, he likes to see the photos he took on the computer and choose which ones we put on Facebook and send to our Apple TV shared photo stream for a screensaver.

More actively involve your son in the process and teach him what to do, and he'll surprise you with how quickly he'll pick it up. (And not delete your photos!)

Answer 4

You could make a cover to fit over that button.