I have decided on a bridge camera for ease of use and price. Would people agree this is the best option?
No... not really.
The 'Problem' with bridge cameras is that they are usually very consumer-marketing driven, trying to pack an awful lot of presumed sales features on the packaging, and consequently tend to be a bit of a camel, a horse designed by committee, and neither fish nor foul. If you want cheap and easy to use, then the point and press simplicity of a compact or smart-phone, is exactly that, and they are convenient and compact. If you want the versatility and quality offered by a DSLR, then you have to accept the bit of bulk, inconvenience and need to learn a bit to use them, but you could get the better photo's you hope for. The bridge 'promises' to be as easy to use as Point & Press, but often isn't; it promises to be a bit less bulky than a DSLR, but often isn't, it promises to be cheaper than a DSLR.. and might be... but it doesn't do what a DSLR might, just encourages you to try.... and be disappointed, because it doesn't.
But... they take pictures....... so it's a dilemma, if you have the patience to get the best from one, then, it might be ideal... but, chances are you wont, and even if you do, it's still very compromised, and that know how would get you far more from a DSLR. If you dont have the know-how, then by serendipity you might get some decent shots that please you with it... but you probably would with a smart-phone or compact.... whether, by serendipity, you'd get more 'better' shots is pretty much down to chance, and I suspect that many do, purely because having bought one, they are enthusiastic about using it and just take more pictures upping their chances.
Also, how important is weather proofing going to be?
Depends on how worried you are about the weather, really. And how conscientious you are about looking after your camera.
In the list of things that might threaten your camera, very top of the list is YOU. If you sling the thing around or leave it on a trestle table under the scaffold, good chance its going to get dropped on the floor or have a hammer drop on it..... weather-proofing or protection filters probably wont really help much here! Common sense might! A little more realistically, is the protection filter argument, where again, the biggest threat to the front lens element is you, and the biggest risk of scratching it is you wiping it clean, and a protection filter wont 'save' a lens being broken cos you drop the camera or drop a hammer on it! Back to common sense.
So, risk vs reward.... eg; Weston-Super-Mere motorbike beach races. Pretty 'harsh' environment, with wet and wind and sand and motorbikes chucking rooster-tails of sand off their tyres at you. Biggest risk of damage is still 'me' and the likelihood I'll wipe the front element and make a scratch dragging sharp sand down the glass. But a bit of common cocum and no long lasting ill-harm to the camera after some diligent post even cleaning. Same beach, kidling with digi-compact, rushing off to take picture of thier sand-castle... and one bludgered electric lens-cap, cos sand got into the mechanism..... and kidling not so diligent! Aided and abbeted by overly complicated consumer product engineering, that suggests an automatic electric lens cap is a good sales feature to have on the box! But what are you prepared to stake for that win? Risk-vs-reward.
As suggested a bridge camera wouldn't make my short-list of potential camera purchases. Weather that had weather-proofing or not, then would be something way way down the list of features that might tip my decision to buy... and it certainly wouldn't be something that was a deal breaker!
Finally, any recommendations on cameras you may have used for wildlife photography/ safaris etc would be greatly appreciated! Finding it extremely difficult to know what suits my needs best.
Is safari/wildlife ALL you are going to see, or want to photo on that continent?
My mother was born in British-East-Africa.. It was a family joke, that the first time she saw a lion was in London Zoo when she came back to the UK aged 9 to see her gran! How much do you really think you will use a camera to take photo's out on the savanah? Even on a holiday, you would likely take more pictures at a hotel or around town than you would at a watering-hole. How much do you think that this idea of wild-life photography do you really expect to be of all the photography you may do whist there? And even IF most of your photo's are taken on safari... how many of them do you expect will be wildlife shots, and how many the camp-site, the tour guide or the party round the camp-fire?
Actually taking photo's of lions and stuff at the watering hole, or flamingos in flight, I suspect, will be a TINY fraction of the photo-opportunities you'd choose to try capture. A-N-D, little bit more thunks, as essentially a tourist newbie, with an over-the-counter consumer camera, and not a lot of know how or experience, either of the wildlife or the camera.... what do you expect to get, and just how good do you expect it to be, compared to the post-cards.... shot by pro's that can spend months, in a hide, with gazzilion $ worth of gear and a tripod, waiting for the subject, the light and the 'perfect moment'? Hint..... post-cards are cheap! And you don't have to hang around a watering hole for months swatting mosquitoes!
"Ah yes, BUT, that was the actual lion... well, its bum anyway.... that charged the rangers Land-Rover while we were there!"..... yeah? Nice talking point, but. As a bit of serendipity, would it be much more of a talking point because you took it with a better camera? Or that you had more 'zoom' to make that lions bum bigger in the frame, would it be any more of a talking point, or would having more zoom, and having to be that much more accurate or lucky to capture that lions bum, actually make it more likely you got a shot of a bit of desert, and were telling your party guests, "Ah, yes, well, just over there.. you might just be able to see its tail... was the lion that charged the ranger's land-rover... oh you should of seen it! It was hileriouse! He'd just gone for a wee, and was trying to belt his shorts up as he ran!"
Me, personally? If cost was a large consideration, rather than looking for a bridge camera on the high-street, I would be looking for a DSLR second hand on here, or the trade sites, or e-bay. A 'cheap' bridge might cost around £200 in curry's. Second hand, I could get a pretty good 'starter' DSLR, bag, spare batteries and memorty cards for the same money.... and actually, for daughter doing GCSE then A-Level then degree photography.... I have!
Bigger and bulkier, and less 'convenient', but not a lot less convenient than a bridge that's not as 'handy' as a samart-phone or propper pocket compact, its a shift of the compromise of an already compromised job. Meanwhile, on green-box auto, daughter spent an afternoon with O/H's 3 year old granddaughter running around with the thing snapping away, and they got some pretty good pictures. It's just as easy to point and shoot use. But, when daughter had learned a bit, then DSLR gave her the chance to do that, she could get alternative lenses for it, and not have to buy a complete new camera, to let her explore new genres and tackle trickier subjects... having box of cameras and lenses she could try already, sort of helped, but? Sticking to the mainstream makers of Canon/Nikon, there's a plethora of know how and expertise and accessories on offer, and for not tooo much money, if you want to progress and experiment. And you dont have so many mule made compromises as with an all in one bridge that is neither fish nor.
Between 13 and 30, I circumnavigated the world a few times, thanks to globe trotting father, and my constant companion was a little Olympus XA2, compact film camera with a fixed 35mm mild wide angle lens..... I still have one, its still one of my most used cameras, and probably half of my photo archive came out of that first XA2 compact... Yes, I have the odd picture of an elk in the rockies or a cow in the Punjab, but mostly by serendipity, and as said, if I wanted a really good photo of a moose in a lake or a tiger in a tree... post-card rack was full of them, and I could have bought the entire rack for less than a roll of film... rather than even try re-inventing the wheel, or moaning that my little compact camera wouldn't get me the picture I hoped for...... let alone, that without the know-how, without the experience, without the time and without the patience, EVEN with the pro-grade gear, I would still struggle to match anything that was on the post-cards! Little compact, got me shots of 'most' of what I saw, and a lot of them things that weren't on the post-cards, like the people I was with, and some of the daft things they did.. for which it, or a smart-phone, was not just entirely adequete, but particularly suitable, bein i9n my pocket when oportunity presented itself, being quick and easy to use, so I could grab a shot, not spend ten minutes faffing with the camera waiting for the screen to come on and get the right 'mode'... food for thought.
What 'really' do you hope to achieve? BUT... key is that either way, its YOU who takes the photo, not the camera. How much do you want to learn photography or to spend time an observer taking photo's rather than a participant doing other stuff? Pick a camera suitable to that aspiration, with a bit of realism of what you could actually achieve dialled in, and remember that a Bridge camera is a bag of compromises, a jack of all trades, master of none, and most of the compromises in them are ones that best suit the marketing men that have to sell it, than you, the person that wants to use it.