I agree about the Sanyo Xacti FH1. This is by far the best $400 camcorder around. Of course, if you can spend more, you can get more. The new Panasonic TM700 offers higher quality 1080/60p video (slightly higher bitrates), really good optical stabiliztion, no 4GB gaps (in fact, it can do long files once SDXC cards are out, no more 4GB limits at all), and mic input option.

With that said, I used the FH1 to shoot soccer video at 1080/60p last fall, with great success, and a big savings on wear and tear on my tape-based Sony. The FH1 is great if your goal is high quality video at the lowest possible price.

What you get along with that is an unsual level of control in a consumer model. You can set exposure and gain (as ISO numbers), focus (though manual focus is kind of clumsy), and various other things... all on the menus, of course.

On the negative side, there are some issues with the camera (maybe these have been fixed on the FH1A). This is shooting in pure MP4 data formats, not AVCHD: MPEG-4 file wrapper, AVC video, and AAC audio. That should be ok, but there's a bug in some of the MP4 streams, particularly at 1080/60p, that will often crash Vegas. I've found that, if I remux a clip, no more crashing -- Vegas works just dandy. Of course, you need fairly serious CPU if you're processing 1080/60p native.

Cineform will transcode the video, but you'll get about 120GB/hr from 1080/60p sources... have lots of HDD space if you're using an intermediate CODEC.

The low-light is kind of freaky for such a cheap camera. I first noticed I was getting overall better video in some lower light shoots than on my four-year-old Sony HDV camcorder. No, this won't compare to a 3-chip 1/3" model, but the 1/2.5" single sensor is not too shabby. This is an 8Mpixel sensor, so they're using pixel binning in video mode, which prevents the color errors you get on smaller single sensors along abrupt image transitions.

If 30p is really critical, it pays to check what the camcorder is actually recording. The Sanyo records a pure native 30p, but unfortunately, you can't independently set bitrate and video mode. So you only get 24Mb/s recording for 1080/60p, 17Mb/s for 1080/60i, etc. It also does 720/30, 640/40p, and a couple of weird high-speed, low resolution modes I haven't used, 448x336/240p and 192x108/600p . The FH1p also has this goofy new Apple mode, which is 960x540/30p. I guess that's for Macs too weak to process normal HD video... I dunno what you'd need this for.

Many other camcorders are not doing "native" 1080/30p or 1080/24p modes, so it pays to double-check, if these are important modes. For example, my Panasonic AG-HMC40 (higher-end model based on some TM300 electronics) records 1080/30p as 1080/60i... all of the tape-based models that do 1080/30p or 1080/24p are recording these as 1080/60i.

What does that mean? Primarily, it means that the sensor is at 30p or 24p, but the video gets a little messed with along the way. Take the 30p->60i recording. The video will be shot progressive, but then split into fields for storage. During the encoding algorithm, the 4:2:0 color subsampling will actually be subsampling on a per-field basis, not per-frame as it should. So the subsampling is actually skewed across four lines, rather than the normal two. For 24p->60i, this is further exacerbated by the fact they're telecining the video. Also eliminates the storage advantage of native 24p (less storage at unit quality, or higher quality at the same bitrate).

So, in short, look for "native" storage of the modes you're most concerned about. Panasonic used to do native 24p in their consumer models, and the do on the HMC40, but I've heard that at least some of the consumer models with 24p are now storing it as 60i, which seems a backward step. Probably not a deal breaker, but worth checking... particularly since Blu-Ray does native 24p (it doesn't do native 30p).