hi, looking for advice here.

i am on the volunteer executive of a small ski racing club trying to purchase a camcorder for the use of our coach who wishes to use it to take training and race videos. apart from playing back video in the club cabin on a 20 year old crt tv and uploading to facebook/youtube for the kids he wants to use it for this:

http://sprongo.com/

we also ideally want to get a short year end video edited together, which we would hire someone to do.

the coach wants an sd card camera so he can quickly transfer videos to his computer and upload it.

this will be a tool used in a gloved hand and exposed to cold weather, travel, abuse and neglect. it needs to adequately handle the contrast of a white background in sunny and fog and generally to be able to film a skier coming down a ski run top to bottom (say up to 200 metres?)

after visiting three electronic stores today i had recommendations from a $250 sony sx45 to a $900 canon (model forgotten) on what to buy. along the way i was told by one guy that cheaper cameras will not manage the light, and will not capture movement well at the distances involved, and by another guy that none of that mattered given the intended purposes here.

my bias is towards the least expensive thing that will do the job since i do not expect any camera to survive more than a couple of seasons. however, i do not want to get something that will produce lousy video quality.

grateful for any help.