09-05-12, 11:23 AM
Tom, I'd agree with pretty much all the advice you've been given here.
A one-in-a-lifetime trip like that deserves to be recorded at the best possible quality. For all their clever facial recognition technology and cunning image processing algorithms that correct for lens aberrations and try to "paint" out the noise in the picture, the results from a compact or bridge camera are pretty poor compared to those from a camera with a decent sized image sensor.
Add some cash of your own to the pot or buy secondhand, but aim for something with a 4/3 sensor.
A one-in-a-lifetime trip like that deserves to be recorded at the best possible quality. For all their clever facial recognition technology and cunning image processing algorithms that correct for lens aberrations and try to "paint" out the noise in the picture, the results from a compact or bridge camera are pretty poor compared to those from a camera with a decent sized image sensor.
Add some cash of your own to the pot or buy secondhand, but aim for something with a 4/3 sensor.