After spending a lot of time online reading reviews, I believe that in the mid-range price ($600-$700 Canadian) these are the top two cameras out on the market right now. As an aside, I refuse to buy Sony's flash-based camcorders on the basis that they still use Memory Sticks.
Here are my first impressions, for what it's worth, I've had the Sanyo for a couple of days now and just started playing with the Canon.
Sanyo FH1
The good
- 1080p60 mode at 24 Mbps is buttery smooth. The smoothness of motion and pans is really exceptional at the wide end of the lens.
- The 240 fps video at 448x336 is excellent, really nice slow motion video at a reasonably good resolution.
- 1080p60 MP4s can be a hassle to play back and edit since they are still uncommon. The included Nero Showtime does a good job of playback, but good luck sending full quality clips to someone else and hoping that they can play them. VLC, Quicktime and MPC-HC are unable to playback correctly (at least out I couldn't figure out how to do it)
- Low light performace at 1080p60 and 1080p30 is quite good and very usable at the wide end of the lens, as you start zooming in, the AF has trouble getting a lock and it's more touch and go.
- Smaller and lighter than the Canon HF200
- Excellent selection of manual controls, which are unfortunately, buried in a not-so-good menu system.
The bad
- The lack of optical stabilization is a major problem, especially when shooting at the tele end of the lens. At 16x zoom, the camera is essentially useless without a tripod. Handheld, the zoom has trouble focusing when you get near the tele end of the lens as it is so shaky.
- Colors seem oversaturated to my taste, when shooting plants, the greens look too punchy. I'm still new to the camera, so I have to see if I can find a way to desaturate the colors a bit.
- The lens is a bit soft when compared to the Canon, even at the wide end.
- No 24 fps mode, but this is really a minor quible. 60 fps can be turned into 24 fps with some motion blur added in software with good results (Sony Vegas does it, for example).
- The autofocus doesn't appear to be as fast or as accurate as the Canon's. I will try to dig deeper into this.
- The menu system kind of sucks, shortcut keys mitigate this to some extent, but the in-camera software is nowhere as good as the Canon's
Canon HF200
The good
- Optical image stabilizer does a good job of keeping handheld shots reasonably steady, even at the tele end of the lens.
- The instant auto-focus is quite good, even in low light
- The camera is excellent at wide end with good lighting, the color and sharpness are exceptional.
- Menu system is quite good and so are the manual controls.
- Better ergonomics than the Sanyo.
The bad
- No 1080p60 mode
- No High-speed shooting mode
- 1080p30 mode is kind of noisy in low light, but still very usable in my opinion.
- Bigger and heavier than the Sanyo
- More expensive than the Sanyo
All-in-all, my first impressions favor the Canon. The Sanyo is a nice camera, but it's just not as polished as the Canon. I'll post again with comparative video within a few days...