Emanuel

I think that word “affinity” is actually more important than people sometimes admit : )
On paper we can reduce everything to specs, codecs, lenses and prices, but after a certain point a system also has to make you want to pick it up and use it. Sony can tick practically every box and still somehow not be the answer (I know exactly what you mean there : )
Since you are very much a hybrid shooter, and stills seem to matter at least as much as video, I would probably look at this slightly differently.
 
On the L-mount side, before changing anything, I would certainly try the Lumix S 24-105mm f/4 Macro O.I.S. It is not an exotic lens, but for somebody moving constantly between stills and video it is exactly the sort of lens that can make a system considerably more useful: sensible range, stabilisation, very useful close focusing and one lens that can stay on the camera for most of the day.
 
Sony is tempting for a different reason. Beyond the enormous stills AF lens catalogue, E-mount also gives you an unusually broad selection of genuinely affordable full-frame AF glass (the AF-AFF route, AutoFocus to Affordable Full Frame ; )
And then there is the increasingly interesting cine side.
The compact Samyang V-AF primes are a good example. They are relatively affordable, matched as a family, and the 24mm in particular is interesting because it makes perfectly good sense on full frame while also becoming a very useful lens on something like an FX30 (a cam I am particularly used to : )
Add Samyang's 1.7x anamorphic MF adapter and AF becomes MF. But put something like DJI Focus Pro LiDAR [ 1 | 2] into the equation and you can effectively bring automated focusing back again (the AF-MF-AF route ; )
And you no longer even need to go through that slightly mad route if you simply want AF anamorphic.
Blazar now has the Apex 1.33x S35 AF lenses and the Talon 1.5x full-frame AF line, while Sirui has its 20mm/40mm T1.8 1.33x S35 AF anamorphics plus the new Astra full-frame AF series. So E-mount is beginning to look less like a one-off anamorphic experiment and more like an actual affordable AF-anamorphic ecosystem.
 
The interesting part is that some of this does not necessarily lock you into Sony either.
The Samyang V-AF 24mm has already been shown working with AF on the ZR through the Megadap ETZ21 Pro+, so at least part of that E-mount investment could potentially follow you across.
And Sirui already offers native Z versions of its S35 AF anamorphics. Blazar had actually announced Z-mount for the Apex originally too, although the production lenses have so far remained E/L.
So for me the real attraction of Sony in your case would not simply be "better video AF". It is the combination of the huge hybrid/stills lens ecosystem, lots of affordable AF glass, the possibility of adding something like an FX30 without changing lenses, the Samyang V-AF route, and now a growing choice of genuine AF anamorphics as well.
At the same time, the ZR increasingly looks capable of borrowing some of those advantages without necessarily committing yourself completely to Sony.
Which, unfortunately, probably makes your decision harder rather than easier... ; )

In purely lens terms, ie, not considering any camera body or brand, 28-50 is perfect for me indoors so either Sigma’s 28-45 f1.8 or Sony/Canon’s 28-70 f2’s are ‘perfect’ other than size, weight & cost.
There is the compromise but for the way I work, it is a case of:
A. 2 bodies + 2 primes vs 
B. 1 body + 1 fast zoom
Now of we redo the size, weight and financials, we are in the parity ballpark, so it becomes a case of which option do we prefer, - the single larger heavier unit, or bouncing between two smaller & lighter set ups?
I am currently in scenario A but in other seasons have worked with scenario B.
Pros & cons to each!
Outdoors, my ‘perfect’ focal range is 50-100 with a smaller (but essential need) to go as wide as 28 and as long as 150.
A 70-200 doesn’t work for me, even if an f1.0 landed, it would still be a hard nope.
Too long, not wide enough.
The 28-105 is the closest in L Mount right now if I remove the Samyang 35-150 from the equation.
First of all, it’s bit really an f2 other than at the widest end where really it is just an f2 35mm, but a massive and heavy one.
I’d rather have the Sigma 28-105 for outdoor work and crop a bit and for indoor, as things stand, the Sigma 28-45 f1.8.
This is my most likely scenario continuing with L Mount next year which is also my most likely scenario as things stand for reasons already mentioned, namely, I am already invested in the system and happy with it other than some lens niggles.
I am pretty sure if Nikon had got the ZR right for me in just 2 further areas; a fully articulated rear LCD (or even just a tilt) and had a 1/4 size Red codec, it would have been a done deal.
I began my career with Nikon and was was with them for 9-10 years and still have a certain, perhaps nostalgic affinity with the brand.
Fuji was almost another decade and I could easily jump that way for stills, but not video and I have niggles with their lenses for my stills needs as it would be GFX in that regard and there are no rangy fast zooms so it’s a no go for me.
I have zero affinity with Canon though always loved the idea of an R3…but nah, that really would be an entirely new system for me.
I’ve been in and out of Sony various times and could go that direction but there is something slightly lacking I cannot quite put my finger on and the best I can come up with is that word ‘affinity’ again. They have ALL of the lenses and I really like the FX style bodies but still…
And so L Mount…
Leica, for all its criticism and arguably elitism, probably does have a difficult to quantify ultimate quality edge in stills over Lumix, but worth the money? Probably not real world, but does have other merits…
SL3-P over S1Rii purely for stills? Hell yes.
Entire S1/S5/S9 range over anything else in the same price bracket for video? Hell yes.
Leica, Lumix & Sigma for lenses generally, yup they have it.
This is just an early morning coffee ramble really.
Another 8 months will determine following 5 years for me…

32x higher full well capacity or 30db more dynamic range (as cited by the video) should equate (if my math is right) with almost exactly five stops more highlight retention. There might be other trade offs so it's closer to 3 stops in practice, though.
In theory, five stops extra would put an FX5 well past an Alexa35 for highlight retention and an iPhone 15 at base ISO (in Apple Log) in close competition. 

I’ve come close to pushing the ZR button a few times now and there are really only 3 things that have prevented me doing so…
1. The file sizes of that Red Raw codec. Apparently N raw is the next best option and there are of course some ‘workarounds’, but until there is a compressed version that maxes out at no more than 1000 mbps, it’s just too much and one of the principal draws of this camera is the Red codec.
2. I’m not unhappy with L Mount. In fact the opposite except for one factor and that is the absence IMO of equivalent lenses to Sony’s: 28-70 f2, 50-150 f2 and Tamron’s 35-100 f2.8. It’s ‘almost’ worth switching just for these lenses alone, but that last word, ‘alone’, but alone is not enough and lenses aside, everything else that L Mount, specifically Lumix offers, beats that of Nikon & Sony.
3. I still have hope that from within the L Mount Alliance, over the coming Winter and next Spring, either (or even both) a rangefinderesque camera will appear from either Lumix or Sigma and at least one rival for one of the lenses above, will appear. Unlikely to be a Leica, but next gen FP a possibility and even more likely, an S9ii?
4. Bonus reason, - switching not only costs money, but there is always a settling in period with any new system that frustrates.
So my set up now just works, I have it and I like it and as above, my only real crit is with regard to certain lenses, but the ZR body style just appeals to me and I would like that rear LCD, but ideally as a fully articulated unit which is a bit of a missed opportunity IMO.

Amazing spec really.
Looks like it could be my forever camera….
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I agree. I had an EOS-M when it was first hacked, sold it, and then broke my own rule and bought it again when Crop Mood hit. Now I have two of them: one built up, and one bare bones. And the developers are improving it all the time -- especially lately. Have you checked out Amit's new builds? They are based on Bilal/Danne's last release so they are seemingly just as stable, if not a little more-so. But the new UI is great, and he seems to be unlocking a new feature every day!

I have one URSA Cine 12K just waiting for... ;- )

At this point, I am pretty sure that I'll still be asking for it next January - and the January after that.  😉
It makes some sense that BMD would bring all of those upgrades to two of their most popular cameras first - now let's just hope that they don't leave the higher-end stuff out.  Judging by their last set of announcements, there is some hope for new features coming to the Ursa LF, given that they're focused so heavily on pushing it into the broadcast market, but I could also see them pulling most of the people working on camera firmware and shoving them over into the firmware that runs on their boxes that are designed to fit in a server rack (the main focus of their recent announcements).

Canon EOS-M with Magic Lantern in 1:1 mode. These are the resolutions currently available:
3072 × 1308 2880 × 1226 2560 × 1440 2520 × 1080 2160 × 1620 (doesn't work with a monitor plugged in) 1920 × 1280 Yes, there's a major crop. And yes, it is possible to overload the buffer with the 3K and 2.8K modes when shooting 12-bit. And rolling shutter is pretty terrible. But it's a digital 16mm camera with 1:1 readout that shoots raw. Practically no moire or aliasing. And a beautiful image (one of my favorites right now, bar none). Plus, one developer has been making major updates to the UI and simplifying the menus in the past 2-3 weeks. It's like a whole new camera.

I ordered one, should be here by tonight.

Sure : ) That's actually how this thread started back in January, and I updated it again in March with the 9.9.2 firmware update : )
So yes, PDAF itself isn't the new part here. What I meant by "quite an update" was 10.2.2 as a whole (and AF finally graduating from beta), especially "10-minute pre-record" and all on the "Same hardware" (which is why those were the two bits I put in bold), that's the news! No need for a new camera ; ) alongside 4-channel audio, Cloud Streaming and the rest.
And yes, you were already asking for the URSA Cine 12K LF back in January... let's see if that one comes next ; - )

Mission 1 and Mission 1 Pro are now $100 off everywhere.  It's still on the pricey side for an action camera, but my Insta360 One R/RS's are getting older/a little beat up and the batteries seem to be showing signs of age too.
I'm not sure how this person did such a deep dive on the imaging pipeline, but it was an interesting read.
https://gethypoxic.com/blogs/technical/gopro-mission-1-gp3-image-pipeline
Info on the sensor:
https://www.sony-semicon.com/files/62/flyer_industry/IMX06A-AJ1R-J_Flyer.pdf
(Also saw that Sony now has a 247 megapixel MF sensor while digging that up, that's a lot of dots)

Exactly. What you call availablism is central here. But with Wong Kar-wai it never feels merely opportunistic. The available does not remain simply available. It becomes emotional architecture.
Pre-handover Hong Kong gave him the lights, the colours, the cramped spaces, the corridors, the streets, the reflections and the limitations. But the art is in turning those given elements into mood, memory and desire. That is the difference between just using a location and allowing the location to become part of the film’s inner life.
In that sense, the uncontrolled city is not only a background. It becomes a collaborator. Wong Kar-wai does not simply take what is there. He finds what is hidden inside what is there.

There is one important point here : )
A Japanese decision invalidating the Japanese patent does not, by itself, kill equivalent patents in the US, Europe or anywhere else (even if they belong to the same patent family). Patent rights are territorial and each national right has, legally speaking, its own existence within its own jurisdiction.
So no, compressed RAW has not suddenly become free for everyone everywhere : )
What is interesting is something else: if the claims are substantially equivalent (and that is obviously the important bit), the reasoning used in Japan may well become useful ammunition in other validity challenges.
That is why, for me, the really interesting question is what Panasonic (or anyone else) does next.
If equivalent RED claims start falling elsewhere too (particularly in the US), then yes, we may be looking at a very different landscape.
- E. :- )
  
 

This has to be fixed! I'll ask Jarred about this (particularly about the possibility of a lighter R3D NE option) and see what he says (E. :- )

Compressed RAW is probably the part I'd focus on before adding more film simulations.
For the dropped frames, a small diagnostics page could be useful: sensor timestamp delta, queue depth, compression time per frame, sustained write MB/s and dropped-frame count. That should make it much easier to see whether the bottleneck is capture, compression or storage.
I'd also preserve per-frame black/white levels and WB/colour-matrix metadata where the device exposes them. Especially useful if you want the RAW processing and calibration to remain consistent across ISO changes.
Interesting project.

Have you thought about background continuity too?
With people and traffic constantly changing, wouldn't traditional coverage sometimes make things harder rather than easier when you get to the edit?
I wonder if longer takes, a few selective close-ups and plenty of B-roll might actually suit this kind of shooting better. ☺️

At least so it seems
 
https://www.dpreview.com/news/panasonic-did-what-apple-sony-and-nikon-couldnt-overturn-a-red-raw-video-patent/
 

There is one important point here : )
A Japanese decision invalidating the Japanese patent does not, by itself, kill equivalent patents in the US, Europe or anywhere else (even if they belong to the same patent family). Patent rights are territorial and each national right has, legally speaking, its own existence within its own jurisdiction.
So no, compressed RAW has not suddenly become free for everyone everywhere : )
What is interesting is something else: if the claims are substantially equivalent (and that is obviously the important bit), the reasoning used in Japan may well become useful ammunition in other validity challenges.
That is why, for me, the really interesting question is what Panasonic (or anyone else) does next.
If equivalent RED claims start falling elsewhere too (particularly in the US), then yes, we may be looking at a very different landscape.
- E. :- )
  
 

You are totally correct, however a fair bit of what I (we) shoot is delivered at the end of the the day, and TBH I can't bring myself to delete OG files when our productions are in the six digits. I ended up buying two 1TB owc cards, but still download and backing up to hard drives for a client and or producer end of a shoot day and asking them to hang around for another 40 min after a 12-15 hour day is not pleasant.
Also I've seen this a few times on set where they shoot Raw and convert over to PRR LT without utilizing any of the raw capabilities and then deleting the raw, which makes me always wonder why shoot raw in the first place!!!!

I bought one and ended up selling it. While the RED NE looks great, it's way to much data for what I shoot and the H265 is terrible, I can't understand how Nikon does not understand the urgency of fixing it.....

That works for long-term storage, but there are really two separate problems here.
Transcoding R3D NE to H.265 solves the archive size. It does not solve the card capacity, ingest time, temporary disk space or transcoding time.
A more efficient compromise might be to keep R3D NE only for the selects that actually benefit from RAW flexibility, then batch-transcode the rest to H.265 in REDWideGamutRGB / Log3G10.
So the weak internal H.265 still matters. The workaround is viable, but it moves the cost from storage to workflow.

If you can afford the cards and temporary space on an internal drive, you could shoot in R3D NE in camera and then after transferring the files to the computer, convert it to log h.265 and delete the original files. By doing this you can get high-quality h.265 and avoid the long-term accumulation of storage otherwise needed for the raw files, not much different from having a high-quality h.265 codec in the camera, apart from the fact that you would need large memory cards and some space on the computer's internal drives for this step. I'm not trying to make an excuse for Nikon for the h.265 but suggesting a workaround who have this camera for one reason or another, and need a practical workflow. 

If you have 20 mm and 60 mm as the equivalent focal lengths that are available, the wider angle makes sense for including oneself in the footage, and showing a bit of environment, which must be a common thing in social media. However, at least I would preferentially shoot with 35 mm or 50 mm a lot of the time. By starting with an 8K sensor, you can get more detailed crops that mimic those lenses at least in angle of view. Of course, you lose light in cropping so the quality won't be the same as using one of the native options, but it is probably less damaged than if you start with a 4K sensor and crop from 20 mm to (say) 50 mm. I'm personally perfectly happy shooting in 4K with a 35 mm full-frame mirrorless camera and doing a bit of cropping doesn't really bother me, but the camera that I use makes the 4K footage by downsampling from 8K resolution, so even in the 4K file (typically for me Prores 422 HQ), there is a better starting point for cropping than if I had shot with a 4K native sensor camera (due to the Bayer sensor not registering all colors for all pixels natively). I think 20 mm would be extremely wide to shoot everything with (that's what the DJI Pocket 4P's magical sensor produces, 20 mm equivalent footage), and I'd want to moderate the angle of view a lot of the time to something in the 35 to 50 mm range. Thus the sensor resolution is likely to play some role in the practical quality that can be obtained. 
 
Although I like the idea of a camera that has a gimbal and can be just taken out of the bag and used, and I commend DJI for bringing the long-in-development LOFIC sensor into an actual consumer product, neither of these cameras (luma ultra and Pocket 4P) are really for me as I basically never do videos with myself in the footage, and the 20 mm equivalent angle of view is just not what I want from a video camera. Cropping (to get an acceptable angle of view) from a small-sensor camera is going to make noise more visible and detail less clear. I think use of a gimbal on a heavy full-frame mirrorless camera is painful for the setup that is required. Eventually I think some good compromises will arise, with moderately light total weight, internal (optical) zooms that don't require recalibration after FOV change, better integration of camera controls into the gimbal user interface, and some digital signal processing that is optimized to reduce the gimbal motor noise from on-camera audio tracks (this will require work on the motors themselves and the processing) are likely to make things more practical for me, but for now most of the time my gimbal is just not being used. 
 
With regards to the dynamic range, I'm used to slide film from long ago and when using it (for still photography) it was essential to photograph in what we called good light, which meant light that was suitable for the material, with no exposure latitude whatsover, and I still try to choose where I shoot so that the subjects and the scene will look good straight out of the camera where possible. With my camera the top video dynamic range is 12 stops and I've not run into anything that would make that feel inadequate, given the starting point of acceptable conditions for photography to begin with, in fact it feels wildly liberating what kind of post exposure adjustments are possible today. I would argue that if there is a situation which requires higher dynamic range, then alternatives probably result in better quality: use lighting for the main subjects in the foreground. If the scene can't be lit then shoot in a location which gives better results without lighting. Post-processing has its limits and I would argue it is not easy to mimic really good lighting on a scene with high contrast but no light (or too little light) on the subjects in post-processing. However, if you can use and benefit from 17 stops of dynamic range, by all means use it if available. I think my life is easier by carefully choosing where the original material is shot. 

Again? : ) Nobody said they are equally important. Not even close. That is not the position anyone here has argued at all, but a dismissive caricature of it, no less. And misleading. Period.
 
What has emerged from several contributions here, including yours and mine on the importance of DR, is simply that their practical value depends on the shot, purpose and workflow.
Extra DR matters in both controlled and uncontrolled high-contrast scenes, perhaps even more so in the latter. Fair enough.
In other cases, reach, reframing, stabilisation, VFX or high-resolution frame grabs may matter too. Budget hybrid cameras, you said? ; ) Correct.
Those are real-world uses as well.
So saying that none of this relates to anything anyone here actually does is rather sweeping, given that more than one person here had already pointed to practical uses for higher-resolution capture while also acknowledging its limits.
Nor is this only about one camera. More will come, including the Pocket 4 Pro with those extra stops, and naturally we will discuss where such advances matter and where their limits begin.
 
This is a camera forum : ) It is the right place for disagreement about cameras, specs, footage and real-world use. Not for theatrics, personal point-scoring, showing off or ego contests. None of us needs to perform as the final authority here, as so often happens on internet forums.
“More useful for one workflow” is not the same as “practically irrelevant to everyone else”.
Either way, life goes on, and so does this thread. Your contribution has been useful, as have those of others. We do not need to agree.
You are one of my fav contributors here, and clearly one of many people’s favourites too. That gives your words more weight, but also more responsibility.
Being a valuable contributor does not give any of us the right to be unpleasant to others. And that last reply was unpleasant. And unbalanced. Prima donna behaviour is no more attractive on a forum than on a professional set. In my work, I simply cross prima donnas off the list. I have neither the time nor the patience for them.
That is worth remembering for all of us. You, me, everyone.
And there is no drama here. This is only a disagreement about cameras. You were the one who announced you were “done”, as though an ordinary disagreement had become rather more serious than it really is.
Perhaps you're simply in a bad mood today (it happens to all of us). But your interlocutor should not have to pick up the bill & pay the price. Almost impossible to take a different position from yours without it turning personal (if not at first, up there you kept escalating until it did, at least this time...), as if disagreeing on a point meant challenging a supposed “authority” : X (phew)
No hard feelings anyway, count on it :- )