A friend of mine is looking for a good affordable <$4000 camera for videoing in the outdoors. He is looking to film wildlife with good enough quality for tv, like hunting shows. He was curious about what options he has in high def. He likes my Canon GL2 but is looking for something a little better or equal to in high def. It would have to be good in low light and have a decent optical zoom. If anyone has any information I would appreciate any help.
Thanks
Sean Lange
teamlange1@yahoo.com

Sony FX7 and sister VU1 have 20x zooms, with a digital to 30x that loses very little, from what I have seen. Check out those forums..

Also, Canon AH1 has a 20x if I recall.

I have been trying to add distance to my FX1 with extenders, but the results are not great. Same with HV20.

Check out the Canon XH-A1. See the forum here.

I would get the v1 and the sony hard disk 4 it. i have this combo plus some bateries and i shot my dad's wedding (second) with about 3 batteries and it was stunning ( 1 bat 4 the camera, 1 4 the disk and one 4 a sony hdv deck/moniter(the moniter was back up))

Good glass and optical IS will be important in this case. The best outdoors shots probably use big tripods (obviously) and IS off (don't want the image hunting around) unless zoomed in so far that wind vibrations make the tripod sway / jitter.

I shot a wedding on a golf green with an XL1s and the 16x non-IS lense. When zoomed all the way in I had a noticeable amount if jitter due to wind buffeting the tripod, and this was a massive broadcast tripod I rented from a local studio. So even a tripod cannot eliminate all jitter for non-IS optics.

If you want audio as well as video then you can either record separately with well placed mics or record live with dedicated parabolic systems (assuming you can afford to be that visible). Almost all of the BBC's nature shows use post production for most of the audio. Audio is just too hard to get along with great pictures, and for some extreme macro shots, they just make up sounds because (for example) ants don't make sounds.

Some hunting videos that I have seen used tree mounted "stead cam" type arms so that the camera can be swung out of view or into view as needed.