Staying Focused

[Circleofconfusion]

Hello everybody.

Getting right to the point here. I have a project (Digital portfolio) that I wish to use digital video in flash or, director, haven't figured out which one yet but anyway here is my dilemma.
I want to capture the moving image of food coloring being dispersed into a bowl of water. Now I have set up a flat faced fish bowl with water and behind it, on the kitchen window I have placed a transparent diffuser so all I have is a white (natural light) background. I am using a Casio QV400 digital camera, in manual mode with an aperture of f/8. Exposure is fine but the problem I am having is that because there is nothing in the bowl at first, by the time the food coloring disperses enough for the camera to focus the initial effect I am trying to capture has already happened and then the camera still has a difficult time to focus. There is no manual focus when in video mode (and no, the focal lock that is available to me in still mode does not work in video mode). So, I am wondering if there is a digital video camera out there (one that is consumer type and not some high end professional $20,000.00 rig) that has a manual focus so that I can get around this lack of focus problem or am I relegated to using an old VCR Tape style camera to achieve the result I am looking for.
Any hints and or suggestions are welcome.

Here is a URL of what I have so far. I know the color is crap (I used a 100watt spot light behind the diffuser and set the white balance to 'incandescent' and an aperture of f/2 but as you can see.. It is not acceptable, although, the image did stay in focus a little better than my last attempt with natural lighting. Which gave me a better white but no focus ability.

http://www.webwerqs.com/img/video/01010102.m1v

Thanks for taking a look see and for any suggestions.
:mad2:

[Chunk]

You'd probably get a better response in the Digital Video or Help forums since this forum is mostly for a monthly project assignment.

If you held a solid object close to the surface of the water and removed it from the scene immediately before introducing the food coloring, would it hold the focus?

[Circleofconfusion]

Tried that but the camera looses focus rather quickly and the action of removing the object creates an unwanted current flow in the water and distorts the effect.
Sorry if I posted in the wrong section. My apologies. I'll move it there ASAP.
Thanks.

[Circleofconfusion]

Moved thread to Studio Lighting section.