Teflon
thats why I was considering a Bridge. less money (once you included lenses), less headache in chosing.
Maybe leave going full in until I have the money to do it justice.
You do it, or you dont... and a bridge?
Its a mule, a compromise solution looking for the problems it likely doesn't solve, for the most part... I really dont much like them; the idea is good... for the marketing men... but otherwise, they are, by and large, neither fish nor foul.
Cost? Old adage, by cheap, buy twice.... they 'look' like they have it all, and the big wow of big zoom, and the salesman saying 'Its all the lens you'll ever need!" seems good... but it dont bear up very often.
The f-no is the focal length of the lens divided by the diameter of the aperture; eg; you have a 50mm focal length lens, and the max aperture is 25mm diameter, the f-no is 2.
Now make the lens a 'zoom' and drag the lens element forwards and back to change the focal length; your f-no now changes as you zoom... and on a really long range zoom.... like a super-zoom bridge camera.... the f-no you get at maximum zoom can be incredibly high... like f9 or 10! This limits the amount of light the lens can let in, so for the same ambient light and the same 'exposure' begs a longer shutter speed.... only, if you have racked out the zoom.... you likely need a higher shutter speed to combat camera shake.
Old rule of thumb was to keep the shutter above one over the focal length; so if you had a 210mm 'zoom' you tried to keep the shutter above 1/250th.
Typical super-zoom bridge, has a max zoom 'equivalent' of maybe 500 or 1000mm or more... which would beg keeping the shutter above 1/500th or 1/1000th... which is pretty quick... and rather hard to do, if you are limited to f-numbers in the higher orders!
Only way to get an acceptable exposure then, is to ramp the ISO... or film-speed in old money... and yeah, wonderful, modern electric-picture makers 'might' go up to silly numbers on ISO.... I think my DSLR ramps to around ISO 6400, plus a couple of 'boost' settings, an unheard of ASA to try buy film at... but still not all that 'fast' even if you are trying to take pictures, even in good Sarf-Afrikan day-light, at f10 and 1/500th!
The Nik-Bridge bequeathed to me by O/H when she gave up and went DSLR, I think tops out at ISO1600.. and so it doesn't take long to hit the buffers, and find out where the compromises the makers made to print impressive numbers on the box, actually are. And at that point, the dang thing starts to become more trouble than its worth, NOT doing the job you want.. and all in one, not able to do anything to it or with it to help, much.. just trade up to a DSLRT, like O/H....
Try and forestall that and buy up the range a 'better' bridge, and very very quickly, you are into the buy-cheap-buy-twice trap, where the cost of a better bridge is rivalling that of a DSLR, and STILL you have these buffers to work around and still cant do anything about them but chuck it away and start again.
Great by the pool-side..... as a fancy point and press, where you aren't stretching the zoom... but then... may as well have shot with your smurf-fone... and that mega zoom, mostly provided curtecy of the 'crop-factor' which can be enormous on these things using camera-phone sized micro-sensors, means that the lens is actually only 5mm to maybe 100mm 'real' focal length, for a 20x zoom rating.
But that 5mm lens, on a bigger camera would be a fish-eye! And its shortest focus distance and the infinity focus range would be incredibly close to the camera, making the focus mechanism a lot easier to make, if not completely redundant; but its still a very very short focal length lens, and you are NOT going to be working in the 'critical focus' region very often if at all... especially with more conservative f-numbers, so you wont be able to get nice OoFed bokah backgrounds to blurr the concrete slab of a hotel behind your bathing beuty very often... ho-hum... back to them compromises....
Oh yeah.... unlike the Smuf-fone or pocket compact... its also not all that compact, or pocketable, and in a lot of cases just as dang awkward and bulky as a DSLR... so you have all the down-sides of a smuf-fone or compact, as well as the down sides of a bigger bulkier more expensive DSLR.... and Jack of all trades, master of... almost nothing!
They take pictures... can say that much for them.... BUT, they are far from a one size fits all photo-panacea; you wont save much if any money, you wont get the better photo's you hope for, and MOSTLY what you'll get is the problems associated with anything else, without the possible solutions...
Back to the start.... do you want photo's or a good holiday?
If you want good photo's, well, in for a penny, in for a quid.... Budget is enough to get an entry level DSLR over the counter, or a possibly slightly better DSLR 2nd hand, and maybe a bit more lens to go with it. BUT... you still have the niggles; you are away how long? How will you save your pictures? What amenities can you bank on whilst away, and how patient and tolerant will be your travel companions to you waving a camera about the whole time, holding them up, every time you have to check the manual to find out how to do something, or make it stop doing something?
Batteries on my DSLR last 'maybe' four hours or so of shooting time. I have four; one in the camera and three in the bag, because on a day out, I will likely need to swap one.. away from home, I have a neat little travel charger I can plug into most 'foreign' mains sockets, or a car fag lighter....
On this one the bridge might win out, mine takes regular AA's I could buy at the concession kiosk when away... bludy expensive though.... rechargeables make more sense, but need a charger and back to the mains supply wherever I may be, starting with whether there is one! Same as if it takes a dedicated lith-pack like the DSLR...
SD cards... on my D3200, with 24Mega Pixie sensor, in JPG common format, come out about 10mb a shot. A 16Gb SD card then will hold, about 1000 pictures.... how many days you away, and how many pictures a day do you expect to take?
I will tend to take around 3-600 on a typical outing.... more if its an interesting one.... but start shooting video and them cards get vert full, very quick. SO.... whats your plan?
When I took a five week back-pack trip round India many moons ago; I bought a chunk load of film, and stuffed it all in every cook and nanny in the camera bag.... I think I budgeted about a roll a day... but all too easy with 'free' widgetal, to get a bit carried away though, and yup.. these days, 3-600 a day, not 36! Fairly easy with film, shoot till the casette full, rewind, swap and chuck the exposed film into the bag to develop when you get home, or post from holiday location to a lab back home so the pictures are sat on the door-mat with the water rates bill, and the pizza-place menus when you get home..... Can do the same thing ish with widgetal, but, you could need a lot of SD cards.!!!
So what's the plan? Clear cards down to a lap-top? If so what space do you have on lap-top hard drive? If archiving, would you back-up to a pocket drive anyway? Do you take one of them with you? What power adapters might you need? what internet access, etc etc.
And you are layering up the niggles as you drill down, looking for solutions to everything.....
And there is likely a woman in the back-ground tapping her foot, muttering "Are we going to DINNER..... or (under her breath) breakfast!"
Which suggests that the camera, is but small part of the whole deal, and the more camera you try pack, the bigger the deal will likely become.... as said, do you want to spend your trip playing cameras or having a holiday? No camera, no problem! Well... apart from that woman, who as woman do, will find SOMETHING to tap her foot and mutter about before dinner! Probably the trousers you choose to wear.. or the creases in them where you packed or something... but that's women!
So this is but a small and lip of the lettuce bit of the bigger picture.....
For me.. I have always avoided Africa, TBH, my mother was born there, and I suspect I'd have trouble leaving the place, or deciding where to go, 'cos of all the family legends.. but still, it would like India quarter century ago be a life-time trip, and I would want to make the most of it, and take LOTS of photo's...
Doing that anyway... it wouldn't be a huge leap, to grab the camera bag I have, with the entry level DSLR in it, and the spare SD cards and batteries and travel charger, and know I had most stuff covered; I'd probably shove the pocket drive for in there to clear down SD cards to, maybe even the lappy as well... and chuck in a travel adaptor for that... and I would likely do 'OK' whatever the ground-situation when I got to it, cos with a full set of charged batteries and the travel charger, I could most likely charge in any hotel I stopped at, of charge from the fag lighter ofr the Toyota Safari wagon, or ask bus driver nicely; When I found wi-fi, I could upload pics from the pocket drive to farce broke or whatever, as precaution against the pocket drive being kerbluggered, that saving clogging up the lappy's hard drive, which would let me google places to see and use memory-map to find out how to get there if needs.... BUT, that 'kit' all told, is probably best part of £5K's worth, all in, just on the electrical gizmos... not £500, and taken me a decade or more to acquire, and I have had that time to practice with it, if only on day trips and UK excursions, so wouldn't have to keep diving into the manuals the whole while......
So.... for where you are at... a one size fits all off the peg solution, is not on the shelf... whatever the salesman may say! More you chase that, more jack-of-all trades you'll likely make, and the more problems you;ll make for yourself rather than solve.....compromises have to be made, so where you prepared to make them?
And do you still have your film camera?
Cos if so.. and if you know that inside out, saves a lot of learning! And spending! Get on e-bay, get some film for it, get some more film for it; buy some new batteries, buy a couple of sets of spare batteries, and off you go... worry about the developing when you get home.
And right off the top... I can say, that for what I have spent on electric picture making in the last few years, I COULD have bought a HECK of a lot of film! and probably got a lot more photo's I actually likes for it! Film aint dead yet, you know... and it STILL has a lot going for it....
But.... its all in the compromises, you are prepared to make, not in the catalogues; and its not 'just' a camera, its a whole picture taking plan, that is needed.
Best of British, with it.... but remember, think outside the box; there's more to photography OUTSIDE the camera, than there ever is in it... so ponder the entirety, look wide, dont zoom in on a micro-scape, and obsess about the little details, catching the penny and missing the pound and all that!