Re: Fresh out of school, low budget, don't know what route to go for my camera

Thank you for the clarification Shawn. To add much-needed further clarity to any argument inherent in your post: exactly NONE of the current DSLR's allow for usable uncompressed 8-bit output, regardless of the capture method, be it internal or otherwise. The recording mechanism is irrelevant: DSLRs cannot deliver this without hacking. And even then, the results are mixed and do not overcome other limitations inherent in DSLR image quality.

Additionally, the various flavors of h.264 are still highly compressed, long-GOP codecs, regardless of the wrapper they use. And none of that has anything to do with a comparison of uncompressed vs compressed signals.

Again, when you need to shoot uncompressed for better flexibility in post, the AF100 and FS100 will give you that option, without having to hack your hardware to unlock this functionality. Further, these cameras do not artificially distort your image through immature super-sampling algorithms as all current gen DSLRs do [excluding one crop mode that one DSLR, the Panasonic GH2, shoots in, which is hardly the only mode you'll want to use all the time]. There is no DSLR at any price that can deliver that.

To the OP:
Again, best of luck making your decision. It bears repeating: consider seriously buying the best you can reasonably afford. You won't ever have to apologize for giving the best image possible, and may even find yourself AC'ing or DP'ing on nicer shoots because they rent your equipment.