Bruce, David, thanks for the info. I guess what I'd like ultimately is Z7 with its existing video autofocus, but recording the open format blackmagick raw internally to the fast XQD cards.
And if heat generation is an issue, even APS-C crop limitation would be great. Wouldn't that be just amazing... oh well:)
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David, have you done any comparisons of Z-log vs N-log on Z7?
I only recently learned about Z-log, so I haven’t bought or tested it yet. (I’m currently on vacation sitting by the ocean, so it’ll be a week or more before I do that.)
I also find that turning view assist on helps autofocus when shooting log, but at the expense of a few more microseconds of delay in the finder image.
The biggest issue I have with N-Log is that Nikon has not, to my knowledge, published either a normalization LUT or a spec for it. I can grade it in Resolve quite well, but for any technical or VFX work, that isn’t really enough. Red’s REDLOG FILM, for example, is based on, and hews very closely to Cineon Log, as does Sony’s S-Log3. Those are easy to use when working with others. Arri Log is it’s own well-published standard. N-Log, like S-log2 is a “who knows” curve, which has real issues for professional work. Better than nothing, but really, not that much better. 10-bit, OTOH, is a Godsend.
As for the APS-C/Super-35 “limitation,” I’m fine with that. Having grown up using film, where S35 was large format, I consider it the norm, not a compromise at all. And the 14-30 with that crop is a truly brilliant lens.
However, the Z6 is significantly better at focus in low light, if that matters to you, and I believe it is better at autofocus overall. I attribute that to the lower data rate—it’s no coincidence that all of the super-af cameras are in the 24 Mpix range: D5, 1D, A9, SL. I think the data processing requirements of the Z7 slow down the autofocus.
Is BM Raw open? That’s news to me. I’m very interested in what happens with ProRes Raw when Atomos and Nikon release that upgrade. Apple and BM haven't seemed to have had the best of relationships. And at the moment, I understand that Final Cut is the only software able to read ProRes Raw. I may be forced to buy the program just for that capability. (I’m using Macs, but not FCP.) It wouldn’t be out of the question for you to pick up a Mac Mini or IMac and FCP just to transcode ProRes Raw. If the camera works well for you, that’s a much more practical solution than it might seem at first blush.