T -5 Days and counting

Minneapolis, Minnesota - With 5 days to go to my departure things are coming together. I'm still waiting on a few last minute packages from FedEx and UPS, and finalizing my packing list, but all in all I'm feeling ready to go.

There are some students that need to clean their room before they can start studying for a test, and my wife has to clean the house before we can leave on a trip. Monday night I got 5 duffel bags of old Army gear down from the attic, and I'm sorting through them looking for gear that might be useful on this trip, and finally throwing away a bunch of stuff that I'll never use again.

My wife is happy that I'm finally getting rid of the junk, and I've found a couple of useful items.

I need a new video camera ASAP

I'm going to be shooting video in Iraq for KSTP channel 5, the Minneapolis ABC affiliate. This is great news for the mission, but it also means that I need to get a new video camera in a hurry. The consumer grade camera that I was going to bring just isn't going to cut it for broadcast quality video...

So I'm in the market for a pro quality minidv camera. Ideally a Panasonic AG-DVC30, because it has cool infrared (night time) shooting capability, but I'll take whatever I can get. A Canon GL2, for instance, would do nicely.

If anybody has a suitable camera that they would like to loan or rent to the cause I would love to hear about it (obviously if I break it I'll buy it). I'll probably end up buying one, but it wasn't exactly in the budget...