I have a 5 year old Sony hard drive handy cam HDR12, bloody awesome camera. Has been to hell and back living on beaches. Takes great HD footage. Also good with stills Can get a x2 lense for it fairly cheap to double the optical zoom Do not get a camera that relies on digital zoom.
A little lacking on the zoom department but very tough is the Panasonic FT3/4 Series tough cameras they take a pretty good still photo and mine takes better quality video than my handycam. One thing I have noticed using my handycam for other purposes is that it is not how far it zooms that is important but how wide it goes. An example of this is to get my whole car in frame on the handycam I have to be standing 10+ metres away.
I use a Panasonic TM700, there are now similar newer models available. Key is it shoots 50P or better 60P, so you can make nice slomos. I also have a Nikon DSLR, but that's hard to use for action shots (manual focus and exposure and not as good VR). Only use it for non-action shots.
Also use a doubler from Century optics (about 400 dollar) to get close enough.
