Vid. cam for filming while hiking

[herm0016]

a friend and I are looking at video cameras, we would like to take one on our hike of the AT next year and I was wondering what type of camera people use, and what you would recommend for us. We plan on possibly making a documentary out of the footage we film on the trail. We both do not know a lot about current tech related to video cameras.
important factors are storage, battery life, weight.

thanks.

 

[jpeyton]

SD: Canon FS100

HD: Canon HF100

Both are flash-memory based = no moving parts = more durable on the go.

Just carry as many SD cards as you need for capacity. Buy some of the extended battery packs; consider a solar-charging apparatus if you'll be away from an outlet for a long time.

 

[theblackbox]

if you plan on thru hiking, it's not worth carrying. two years ago on our hike, our packs averaged 13 pounds - food and i could't have imagined carrying more then the small digital camera and extra batteries we had.
A word about solar chargers. On the AT forget about it. even if you strap the charger to your pack and leave it out all day, the chance you'll get a camera battery charged enough is not very well. if you spend a lot of time off trail near a plug, you can keep it charged.
Why not just take a digital camera, and when you are done edit together a video based on a slideshow and movies recorded off the camera.
If you carry a videocamera and you're semi serious, you'll be sending it back when you hit neels gap, along with all the extra dead weight you thought you would need.
the big thing to consider is the logistics behind charging the batteries, how many towns are you gonna hit and how many zero days? if you spend a lot of time in towns, you are taking away from the whole AT experience.

 

[herm0016]

we are both pretty experienced hikers, my partner being a wilderness guide in Utah, and I doing a lot during the summers. Solar charging is a possibility, but it would be something i would have to experiment with a lot. What sort of battery time can you get out of the above mentioned?

13 lbs - food is doing pretty good. we should be right around that. my base weight (pack, sleeping system, tent, cooking system, headlamp, firstaid) is about 8lbs right now. We figured hitting a town about once a week for re-supply, both of us have done trips in the 10 to 12 day range without resupply though. The charging of the batteries was my biggest concern.
Are there some digital cams that take good video that also have a mic? this is a good option to look into, i did not really think about it.

 

[theblackbox]

solar works well for cell batteries like aa and aaa, but the bigger batteries like video cameras and dslr use just don't charge well, especially on the AT where you've got canopy cover almost all the time. I knew a few hikers that would use the towns to recharge, but if you plan on more then just sporadic shooting, you'll be using the towns quite a lot.
charging batteries was a big concern to us, and my solar charger was one of the first things that got scratched from the needs list while still in georgia.
we had a little extra weight as my wife is diabetic(type I) which added a bit of a twist to hiking the AT.
back to the subject though, it comes down to how much blue blazing you want to do if you plan on seriously making a documentary, and how good your resupply and support is.
if you have a good resupply network, you can always carry a couple of batteries and have a couple of charged batteries ready to mail out to you. having someone that can receive your dead batteries and send you good ones and keep that up is a good work around, as i'm sure you've looked into setting up your drops, it's not too much of a concern or hard to work around. we did that with xd cards, we carried three and had three shipped back and forth as we went once we filled them up. so we always had access to empty cards and didn't worry about having full cards with us.

as far as resupply, the AT these days is too easy to hike when it comes to supply points. without trying you can usually go 4-5 days tops as supply is available just about everywhere. kind of takes away from the whole experience, but thats the reality of nature versus construction expansion. even the 100 mile wilderness isn't really that anymore.

before you go, do a couple of hikes with a video camera and equipent to see how it works for you.

i wish you two luck and hope you enjoy your AT hike. you'll find no matter how experienced you are, it's a pleasently different experience, and a challenge you'll never forget. i would say some day i will go back and do some section hikes on the AT but i doubt i'll ever go back to the east coast again. now we are eyeng the pacific crest

 

[soydios]

Do they make any solidly built small but decent-quality camcorders? I got the FS100 for my mother for her birthday, and it felt a little flimsy. My mother's treatment of cameras isn't exactly FBB's so that's not a problem for her, but I dunno how well it would fare being crushed into the bottom of hiking pack.