How much you want to spent and the kind of quality you are looking are all important information we need before we can make any suggestions. Please tell us more.

<whistle> Those "going to Africa" cameras can get pretty pricey. When you add in the "once in a lifetime" accessory package, you're looking at some serious coin. (BTW, how much is your airfare and how often will you use your airfare?) :)

Of course I would want the best quality for the money,and I guess I would be wanting to spend between $1000 and $1500.

Will you be delivering in interlaced or progressive form? There are some models which do 50p or 60p HD you might like to look at.

"Of course I would want the best quality for the money,and I guess I would be wanting to spend between $1000 and $1500."

Who doesn't ? :)

A bit more coin buys you a lot more camera. If you can find more money then the Canon XA10 looks like a very nice package to me. I see they can be had for around $1700 in the USA so pretty much at the upper end of your price range. For the money you get balanced audio inputs and full manual control of everything. You can remove the audio bridge for when you want to go lean and mean.

Bob.

I would recommend the Panasonic HDC-TM900.

John

X2 on the HDC-TM900. I've had mine for about a month. So far what I've seen I like. I'm still getting used to how small it is, but overall that's a good thing.

I'm leaning toward the Panasonic Lumix GH2, rave reviews continue to pour in. My Sony FX1 has been good to me, and continues to be, but nature vids on tripods are my main thing.

x3 for the Panasonic HDC-TM900. 3 sensors, 60p, get the wide angle lens for it.

rocky

Sammy, the following web site is a great resource for objective reviews of camcorders in your price range:

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/

They thought quite highly of the Panasonic HDC-TM900, gave it a score of 9.9.

I would recommend the Canon HFG10. It's basicly the same as XA1 without the Pro audio.

It also get's 9.9 at camcorderinfo :)

/Ulf

I just did a Google search and it appears that the successor to the TM900 is now available: Panasonic HC-X900M High Definition Camcorder

I'm also a proponent of this line of Panasonic camcorders (I have the TM700). I really like the ability to record in 1080 60p.

Here's some footage taken with my TM700, if that helps: parrots.zip

Of course, buying a camcorder is akin to buying a car - it's like trying to decide whether you want a Honda or a Toyota.

...Jerry

If you do research the Panny 900 you're going to find a lot of internet chatter about fan noise. I can tell you from first hand experience the fan noise argument is nonsense. At least it is on my unit. To test what a lot of people are saying about the camera recording fan noise in quitet environments I took it to church on an evening when no one was in the sanctuary. I recorded 5 minutes of video in the perfectly quiet sanctuary. I know for a fact the fan was running, but Vegas nor what I rendered found any fan noise.

Thanks everyone. I'm going to do some research on all the suggestions. I just wanted some general direction from users not sellers and that's exactly what I got. Thanks Again

i just did a documentary shoot on charitable giving last year. I took along my Sony HVR Z7 which is a prosumer sized camera. Everywhere I went it felt like too much. Nairobi is a busling city. A white guy with expensive equipment is a magnet for attention and theft. The larger camera was great and professional looking for interviews, but frankly it was a pita for shooting b-roll.

Also, keep in mind that if the Kenyen customs realizes you are shooting video for any kind of project there, they are going to ask you to pay some sort of media fee. I hid my camera stuff in my clothes and kept quiet about what I was doing to avoid paying for this permit.

I brought along a single LED light but never used it. Rural Africa is full of places that don't have electricity and that have open structures that let in lots of natural light. We were fortunate in that it was a little cloudy almost our entire month long stay. We did use a hand held reflector disk quite a bit though. Even for office interviews, one of us would be standiing outside with a reflecter to light the person being interviewed.

Since I used an HDV camera that shoots on both cards or tape, we shot to tape. That was great because if we had shot to card we would have had to transfer footage every night. We worked from sunrise to sunset every day for the entire month and transfering footage each of those days would have been horrible. Not to mention that some places we stayed had no electricity and power outages were common in places that did.

People talk about certain projects being low budget, but ours was a good rung below that. There were three of us that went and one of the guys was from there originally. I only found out about this on the trip, but he had left when he was a child because his father had died, and his older sister had epilepsy. Members of his father's family had somehow decided that this was because of some lack of morality on their part and had planned to take the sister at night and perform a circumsisin on her. My friend's mother was warned about this by one of her sister-in-laws and the next thing you know, my friends family was on a plane bound for the US. Many years had passed since all of this and his fathers family treated us really well now. We stayed in a combination of his families homes and a Bahai center (the two other guys in this project were Bahai's). I don't think we spent a thousand dollars each the entire month. We also stayed for about a week in the home of a Bahai gentleman who ran the World Vision distribution in his area. We camped out in a Masai "buma". We slept in people's homes. We stayed in an orphanage. Living with the people we were interviewing totally changed the way the interviews went. There is just a world of difference between what we got and what we would have shot had we done the standard thing of arriving in a car from some fancy hotel, setting up expensive equipment and then tried to get the people to talk to us openly.

In Kenya, there are about 50 tribes and almost everyone is a member of one of these tribes. In a city like Nairobi, the influence of this is hard to see, but in the rural areas it is striking. If a person is well educated they will speak English and Swahili. Primary school is free but secondary school costs. If a person is young and not well off, they will speak Swahili and some English. Young well educated people will speak English and Swahili. Older rural people will speak their native tribal language and some swahlil. Keep in mind that there are about 50 of these tribal languages. Young rural people will speak their tribal language, Swahili and some English. The fact that one of us could speak Swahili was an incredible asset. The Massai spoke their own language, but the leader of the family we were following spoke some English.

I took an Olympus LS-10 audio recorder and was really glad that I did. I got some children's choir singing that was just beautiful. I was really glad that I had the Olympus and not a Zoom because the Olympus is much better at rejecting case handling noise. We did the audio recording hand held and with the Olympus, there is no noise from my hands being on the recorder. It would have been horrible with a Zoom.

The rural and urban shooting experiences where entirely different. Urban shooting in Nairobi was very much like it would be in New York. Rural shooting was entirely different. When we would go into a rural area, at first I would be really aloof and stand-offish. I would avoid eye contact and just do my thing shooting b-roll quietly in the background. Later I would strike a conversation with the kids, and show them the pictures I was taking. At this point I woul be sort of mobbed. Many of the children had never seen a picture of themselves and it was entirely intriguing. At this point, all the children would be happy to do whatever poses I wanted, whatever dances, singing, general showing off or whatever. The only thing they wouldn't (or couldn't do at this point) was act natural. That is why the initial aloofness was so important,

If I was to do it again, I would take some sort of camera that looked like a still camera: either a SLR or a mirrorless camera like a NEX5 or 7 or a Panasonic GH2. There is something about a video camera that really scares people. A still camera (or a video camera that looks like a still camera) is entirely different. You can pull it out at a restaurant. You can pull it out anywere and nobody thinks anything of it. Yes they want to pose at least once, but after that, nobody even seems to know you are shooting. Interviews are different. It's nice to have a pro looking video camera for those.

If I couldn't use tape, I would take maybe 70 32GB SDHC cards, maybe even 64GB or 128GB SDXC cards, so that I could avoid taking a laptop and a portable harddrive (and backup). I would take the camera, a Beachtek for interviews (or maybe a flash audio recorder since the interviews are not everything you are doing and you only need to sync the interviews). I might take a couple of Z96 LED lights and maybe some of those flexible tripods you can wrap around things to hold the lights. You need a good reflector. You need a good camera mounted mic and wind jammer for b-roll. You need some lapel mics and maybe a shotgun and boompole for interviews. A good but light tripod and fluid head are important, but make sure it is really light and portable. You are going to be carrying it everywhere,

My wife leads a lot of non-profit mission trips and had the good sense to pack me Cipro (a strong anti-biotic) and a bunch of granola bars. I also got malaria medicine to take everyday. When we went into Tanzania I had to show my form that proved I had been innoculated against yellow fever. The other guys didn't and had to pay bribes to get past this requirement. I never needeed the cipro, but one of the other two guys got really sick and did end up taking it. I was really glad I brought it.

I was sick every day and only later realized that it was because of the anti-malaria pills. There are two types of malaria medicine. I chose the pills because they have no psychotic side effects. That guy who killed those children and families in Iraq was taking some sort of malaria medicine. I'm not saying that it caused his behavior, but it could well have been a contributing factor. Anyway, that sort of thing scares the heck out of me.

The project we did is called "Give to Live". It is still being edited (by somebody other than me) and I don't know how far along it is. There is a website for the project here. if you are interested. The website is done in Flash so you can't see it on an iPad (hence my disdain for Flash that I expressed in another recent thread). Very pretty on a computer though.

One more thing. Bring an unlocked android GSM phone. Boy was that handy! Kenya sort of skipped the wired Internet phase and went straight to cell phone Internet. A local Safaricom SIM card with $20 worth of Internet is a wonderful thing to have. Even when I was in the remotest Massai villiage I had 3G and could show the local chief what his buma looked like from space! Nobody outside of the US and Canada buys monthly cell phone and internet plans. Cell phone and internet is all prepaid. A cheap unlocked Android GSM phone will keep you in contact with everyone at home and there pretty cheaply. Sign up for Google Latitude and people at home can even track where you are (which is pretty comforting if anything goes wrong). Don't get an international plan added to your regular service. It is a complete ripoff. Just get a local sim for a fraction of the price and a separate smart-phone to put it in. With Google Voice you can text over the internet to people at home for free. Don't even think about a regular cell phone. That won't give you anything but local calls. The android (or unlocked older iPhone) will keep you in contact with the rest of the world.

Canon has good prices on refurbished. I bought my HF M40 from them and love it. Best purchase I have made for a while.

Dave T2

If you feel comfortable using a DSLR ( although technically it's not ) camera then Panasonic GH2 can't be beat for your price. Excellent video and excellent stills all in one. Clips import into Vegas without problems. If you want to use available hacks you can get video as good or better than $4000 canons or Nikons in a smaller camera that's also more video friendly ( apparently ).

Do some research, pros and cons of going this way.

I agree. The GH2 may well be your best option.

I just did a Google search and it appears that the successor to the TM900 is now available: Panasonic HC-X900M High Definition Camcorder
=====================
Jerry,

When I checked on the camcorderinfo site, they compared the HC-X900M to the TM900 and the HC-X900M didn't fare as well.

The TM900 replaced the TM700 that you own. When they compared those two the TM900 didn't fare as well as the TM700.

Not a good pattern.

But the TM900 is selling for a very reasonable price right now.

John

Just a month ago I got my TM900, 32 GB card, extra battery, battery charger and HDMI cable for $809. I thought that was a great deal! Oh . . ... Amazon.com vendors.

"When I checked on the camcorderinfo site, they compared the HC-X900M to the TM900 and the HC-X900M didn't fare as well"John,

That was a interesting review. While they thought the X900M was a good camera, it scored lower than the TM900 on virtually every test (except stabilization & a slightly improved Video Sharpness).

...Jerry