DSLR vs Cine cams for urban birds and wildlife videos?
I'm a baby videographer with a starter cam (Sony ZV-E10 I) and lens (Tamron 18-300). I bought them to see if my passion for birds translates into footage reliably. I enjoy the process immensely, even when I feel entirely betrayed by the lack of optical stabilization in my hardware. Gyroflow saves my life almost every day. I generally shoot at f1/8 and 1/1000 to help it - and I like the snappiness. I feel a bit limited by the 300mm distance, and I think my mature setup would have something like a 100-500mm lens.
I have mobility limitations, so at least for now I'm shooting in the city, around my apartment. Amsterdam has a lot of shrub and amphibious birds, and I'm learning a lot about them.
I don't really shoot stills, I believe the essence of any bird is in its movement, decision-making, and reactions to the world. I also prefer long shots as they show the real behavior better than the far-mid-close-up editing documentaries do. My footage is less stimulating, but I like it more. At some point I want to learn to track a bird as it takes off, changes location, and lands again, which means tracking and zooming at the same time. It appears to be virtually impossible to achieve with a basic setup like mine.
The way I see it, I have two possible options for my next camera:
- stay with DSLRs, get some OSS and a bigger sensor with more CPU to get something like 8K raw and crop in post-production to 4K for extra stabilization and zoom;
- switch to cine hardware? Would it give me better tracking? Sony's AF is horrendous at non-people, so I'm in MF most of the time, but the lens is not parfocal, of course, so I can't really pull-off any zooming shots, I have to cut out the zooming. I know little about cine cameras and lenses (even less than photo ones), but they appear to be more suited to what I'm after. Is that so?
I might be missing something very obvious for my lack of experience, and I would be grateful for your opinions or example setups that achieve something similar to what I'm after. I would be glad to fit my next setup into 5-7K USD, but if what I want costs 15K or more, I'm willing to save and wait.