This may be OT, but my first 35mm camera (when I was 15) was my dad's old Argus - 4 f/stops, 5 shutter speeds, no light meter and 'guess focusing' on the fixed lens. I used that camera for 3 years before I bought my first SLR (Pentax Spotmatic F). A lot of the time I couldn't afford film so I just took the camera out and composed images without film. It taught me how to see. The point is, if he's serious about photography he'll learn to appreciate the quirks, limits and abilities of whatever camera he has in his hands, and over time he'll trade that camera up to something else.
Evelyn Glennie is a percussionist, a conductor and the only solo percussionist (ever?) for the London Symphony Orchestra. She's also completely deaf. She conducts barefoot and she senses vibrations in different parts of her body. When she was a girl and her parents took her to a music teacher, she wasn't sure what to expect. He looked at her, gave her a drum and told her to come back in a week. She invested that week exploring the drum, how it felt to hold it, tap on it, what it weighed, what it's dimensions were... Give your son a camera and tell him to come back in a week. See what he does with it.
My $0.02
Mike.
Completely NOT OT. Outstanding story, and gives you the chance of thinking about real handicaps people encounter in their lives, and the way they use it to their advantage.
I also did what you tell here, I used to grab my brother's Nikkormat EL with no film, and shoot blanks in my backyard, trying to see the images in my mind.
We all learned the hard way, each pressing the shutter caused a small pain in the stomach, considering all the time and money to spend in developing of the film, making contacts or mounting the slides, hoping for a good exposure and good focus, and then making the final print.
Our kids have such a great time ahead of them.
