For that price you can afford a digital camcorder that will store data in its hard drive, sony has a good rep for its lenses, other reputable brands are jvc, canon and panny.
Now, if you don't want to mess with the hard drive and having to uploaded to a pc, then burn it to a dvd, you can always get a camcorder that records its data onto a dvd-r disc, those are the easiest in terms of user friendliness, pop a blank dvd-r disc and hit record until you run out of space, once it's done, you can play it in any dvd player.
The last but not least is the old mini-dv tapes camcorder, those will be the cheapest but you will have to either keep buying blank tapes or keep transferring the data onto a vhs tape or if you have a dvd recorder, you can transfer it from there. The latter I will not suggest since pretty soon it will be obsolete, well maybe not that soon, but just think of it as tape players when the dvd players just came out.
I like the Sony brand for camcorders since it has an underwater housing made for their cameras (only will be good if you go snorkeling/scuba/skiing or just filming when hiking).
Sony HDD for $700
JVC 20GB HDD for $346
