Having said that I can also say; you can get an avid setup for your windows PC fairly cheap. Or if you wanted you could use Premiere so that your final edited product can be imported into After Effects with no problems. I use a plug-in for Final Cut Pro called "Automatic Duck" which costs around 500 bux but it works great. Premiere can do that without the need for a plug-in.
The one problem you will run into is the render times. If you’re doing a lot of heavy editing and rendering you’re really going to bog down your computer to the point of a crawl. (At times) Just keep that in mind and be ready for that.
As far as a camera it comes down to how much money you have. "Picture quality is just a matter of price. The question is how good do you want your film to look?"
I work with some higher DVPRO50 equipment but then again it's not coming out of my pocket. For my own personal camera I have a GL2 and a XL1 (Both Canon cameras). I could go on and on about cameras but really it's a little like speakers in the respect that it's all relative to how you view things and how your final project looks. By that I mean that even with a little 400 dollar MiniDV camera (both cameras above are MiniDV by the way) you can add enough effects and filters over it to make it look great. Picture "Man on Fire" and think of how that film looks. It never had accurate colors in it. It was always shifting in hue and saturation. This can be done easily with After Effects (I do it in Final Cut Pro). If you do that your little film will great.
If I was to recommend a camera to you I would say the GL2.
I hope this helps. It's more of a ramble on my part than anything.
