DV Camera for high humidity/Rain forest areas

I am talking to someone now about filming research teams in two areas. The first is southern Chile (patagonia area) and the second is in Costa Rica (Rain forest bordering Panama). Can anyone recommend a DV camera that works well in outdoor settings.

I have been researching and have seen cameras between $4K and $10K that fit the bill. If you can get a comparable image from the $4K camera it would leave a lot more in the budget to either 1) pick up a second camera or 2) devote more of the budget to good sound equipment.

Thanks in advance.
 
!n the lower range the Panasonic AG-DVX100B and
the Panasonic HVX200 are excellent cameras.

In the upper range the JVC GY-HD110 or the newer
JVC GY-HM700. The smaller JVC GY-HM100U is
cheaper and quite small, but has almost all the same
features.
 
What type of lens do you need? I can imagine shooting in a rainforest you would need some decent wide angle for following up close to the researchers and something a bit longer for reaching out into the trees etc.

The DVX only has a 10x zoom iirc and no interchangeable lens system. The HVX200 has a 13x zoom or something I think.

You could look at the Canon XL2 or the Hi-Def equivilent Canon. With a 20x and 3x lens it would be pretty versitile. Also the colour saturation on the Canons is sublime.
 
Given the area I may be filming would I be better served shooting to a card vs tape? Does shooting to an HD card give me more versatility vs dv tapes? Being we are in the middle of nowhere (literally) I would not have access to supplies. I intend on shooting for the edit and taking as much footage as I possibly can.

Right now all the research is being done in the waterways around the reserve. They are looking into the impact of salmon farming on the local dolphin population.

The person is my former boss and this would be my and his first venture into the visual format. Up until now the focus has been on audio books. We have worked the environmental causes from the monetary and PR side of things, but never filmed anything.
 
DV tapes do not fare well with extreme humidity. However, using decent solid storage such as P2 cards will be very expensive. A 16gb P2 card is around £500.

Another option is recording onto DV and a HDD at the same time so you have backups. Unfortunately 80gb HDD such as a firestore will only give you about 6 hours of footage.

Ideally you need somewhere to dump your RAW footage after each days shooting. Without this you will be stuck with a lot of DV tapes or HDDs.

What is your overall plan for the workflow of the data?

I am thinking actually, that DV tapes in somewhere with extreme humidity is a very bad idea. I think you should start looking for a prosumer camcorder that maybe takes HCSD cards. A 32gb card is about £70 and can store 12 hours of footage.
 
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Being in the middle of nowhere (literally) your main concern is going
to be power. Batteries don’t hold a charge for long.

Shooting to tape or solid state is about even. Tape is cheaper,
but carrying 40/50 tapes in an out can create issues as well as
the build up of moisture. The JVC uses SDHC cards which aren’t
too expensive and are much smaller. A 32GB card (there are two
slots in each camera) will hold about 3 hours of HD so you can
have up to 6 hours of continuous recording.
 
Then after 6 hours where will he dump the 64gb of footage to? Will it be literally in the middle of nowhere or will there be somewhere you can go back at night with power?

Grab a camera, a ton of batteries, at least 128gb worth of HCSD cards and then figure out some method of dumping the raw footage.

If you will have somewhere at night to go back to with power then it might be worth building a 2TB RAID tower of some sort you can hook up to a laptop. Infact it doesn't really have to be RAID, you can external 2TB firewire drives relatively cheap.

If you do need to get an external HDD system then make sure to get firewire, USB will be too slow I think.
 
There is a house on the reserve where the researchers live. They have the first set of solar panels installed and are now starting to install panels on the greenhouse. This, according to the researchers, gives them enough power to recharge their laptops and run other small equipment in moderation. This is in Chile.

The property in Costa Rica is run on diesel generators.

I will be able to dump to a laptop. The editing would be done after all the film is complete.
 
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