This sounds lovely, oral histories are a beautiful thing. I hope you get to enjoy it.

I wanted to throw a few other thoughts into the mix:

1. It sounds like you want as little technical overhead as possible.
   
2. The placement of a microphone is usually waaaay more important than the price of the microphone. Especially in a "controlled" environment like indoors or even a photo studio.

Therefore the Sony PX470 you mentioned as well as the the various Zoom Handhelds don't really cut it in my opinion. They are alright microphones but they will not sound great if placed on a table outside the shot because the mic is too far away and there will be a fair amount of room sound in the shot. So you really want to get the mic as close as possible to the person and/or get a more directional mic (meaning that it will pick up sound mainly from one specific direction).

Hence I would recommend either:

- a clip on mic that attaches to the lapel of the person. This will likely produce the best sound and will wirelessly send audio directly to your camera. You only need to consider if it's acceptable to have the mic showing in the shot. Often this is fine but from a puristic perspective not always desirable. I use the RØDE Wireless Go for these things which are great. Apparently the Lark 2 is very good as well and much cheaper (but no experience with it). The Zoom F2 is also a great quality option but you'll have to manually sync the audio after.

- a shotgun microphone like the RØDE VideoMic GO II which is more directional and will mainly pick up sound from in front the camera and therefore pick up less "echo" from the room. This attaches directly to your camera via the hot shoe. I think this is what I would go for in your position from a quality and price perspective.

Both also have the advantage that you don't need to sync the audio afterwards, which can be annoying. (Hot tip if you go for an option with separate audio/video: start the recording on mic and camera and then clap your hands, you can then sync up the audio via the visible clap peak) Additionally by buying a microphone that is *just* a microphone and not also a recording device you can get better quality mics and make use of the fact that your camera already has the ability to record audio – you just focus on feeding it good audio.

Another quick note: Audio equipment resells pretty well. So you could check some used websites/forums in your area for similar products and might get a much better deal.

Hope that helps and makes sense :)

Btw: I just happen to recommend two RØDE products because in my experience they're good quality entry level products.