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Well, the S1R was $3699 at launch back in 2019, and the Z8 was $3999 at launch in 2023 - and that has a 45.7MP stacked sensor (from Sony?). So I think they'll either launch a cheapish high-res camera (S5R ?) aimed primarily at stills use (in A7CR/Z7ii price territory) followed maybe by a higher-end video-orientated camera later (S5H ?), or attempt to merge both (but I think they'd have to undercut the Z8 street price to sell enough). But like you, I suspect they'll go for the high-res 'value' option...

Yes it is mostly about cost, and weight/bulk. I'm no longer shooting for money and my financial position is not nearly good enough to justify keeping ~$6-7K of kit for personal shooting, when I think I could probably be happy or at least satisfied with ~$3K worth, and put the rest into savings/retirement. A good chunk of my shooting is also in fairly risky scenarios, and I guess as I get older the idea of a ~$3-4K body with $500-1,000 of lens and rigging on it getting smashed or stolen is increasingly less appealing than risking a $1200 body with $50-500 on it. I'll definitely be happy about heading out the door with a 20lb backpack on instead of dragging a 35lb Pelican! We'll see. I've started buying the m4/3 setup, and am going to sell off the L-mount stuff I haven't really used as much first. Maybe the GAS/shiny new toy instinct will take back over, but I like to think I'll be able to continue being an adult about this 😄

Can’t chime in on the vehicle talk but getting back to camera needs I’d look nowhere else than Sony FX3 / FX6. Since OP mentioned lowlight / nightscape / astro. Pair em with a 24-70mm f2.8 GM.

So if you'd be using the Lenovo laptops, you'd need to understand their power draw in the scenarios where you'd be using them and then size battery accordingly. Newer laptops will use less - and many can be powered by USB-C which makes running from DC trivial. My macbook (14" m2 max) pulls up to about 100w when doing an export, but I can use it just about all day unplugged if it's just for web browsing, etc. I'm sure that there are modern Lenovos with the latest Intel or AMD chips that use less power too. The GPU will still be a power hog, though, generally speaking. So that's a vote against diesel, then! If diesel is problematic in at least one country where you plan to go, then gas is the better option. A 4WD sprinter, especially if lifted a bit, equipped with off-road tires, and properly weighted, will get you a lot further off-grid than a stock 4 runner towing big heavy camper. Extra bonus, as far as I know, Sprinters are sold/available in lots of countries. You could also look into a Delica, especially since you're accustomed to driving on the wrong side of the vehicle already. It's a Mitsubishi van that was built for off-road performance. Specs are slightly worse than an Outback which means it's better than about 80% of stock pickups. (But comments about parts availability are relevant with a Delica!)

Car camping! I partially built out my Skoda Octavia estate for this with one back seat down, raised boot area with slide out cooking facility under the raised rear door. Inflatable air mattress taking up 50% of the boot and the folded rear seat. Portable plug in cooler went in the front passenger footwell. Then it was going to be Porta Potti with one of those pop up toilet tents you can get off Amazon for about 100 quid, but Covid hit and I never finished the full build out and bought a caravan in the second year of that era. Which had aircon! Power on the go is always a problem, even in my MH and I have a portable battery unit that can be either charged by solar or plugged into the dashboard when the engine is running, ie, when driving is best. But my MacBook can chew through that in around 2 hours max but if I had an inverter (I think it is), I could plug in to my vans electrics and massive lithium leisure battery. On site, plugged into electric, no issues. The entire car camping set up though (without the cost of the vehicle) was less than 1000 quid, so; cooking kit, coffee maker, flask, 10 litre water tank, air mattress, 4 season sleeping bag, travel cooler, power bank battery, timber, clip on privacy screens for all the rear windows and a curtain on a stretch cord to close of the front seats. Plenty of jacked up 4WD estates such as Skoda Octavia Scout (which is what I have and on all season tires, can munch through up to nearly a foot of snow. Uphill), Audi, Subaru etc, without going full SUV, though something like a Landcruiser of course is going to have more interior room, specifically head height and can go further of road. But as you say, start modestly and go from there... Good luck with it but take a look at pickup truck campers because with that option, you could start with a camping/tent option and then later upgrade to the actual truck top camper unit if and when budget/requirement allows.

So if it's going to be 45 - 47 MP, I wonder if it's going to be a fast stacked sensor and possibly the new camera might be a replacement for both the S1r and the S1H (giving that 8K video capability with usable rolling shutter)?

How much budget are we talking here because it’s looking like 100k+ at this stage?! Each to their own, but I personally would want a proven business in place with at least 12 months of real turnover to justify any real expense. When I bought my MH, It was end of year 22 / start of year 23, so I had proven numbers of several decades. The MH cost me approx 65k. Previously, a typical 70 nights away per annum was costing me in dinner, B&B, approx €100 per night so €7k PA. Over 10 years, that’s €70k of dead money or +€5k over what I paid for the MH. OK, it costs me about double to fuel it over my Skoda Octavia and there is annual insurance and servicing and that all adds up to an additional expense over the car of approx €1.5k PA, so €15k over 10 years. €65k purchase + €15k additional running costs = €80k over car & hotels etc, but… Resale of MH after 10 years approx will be around €25-30k so net saving will be around €20-25k over that 10 year period. Plus as a family, we have a ‘free’ MH for every day I am not working! But unless your pockets are very deep and your turnover/margins are going to be very high… Camper + tent + trailer + quad is where I would be starting! One other option, truck top camper on flatbed pickup because you can dump it any time to go properly off road.

Viewing distance definitely matters! I didn't watch the video yet, but I remember that Kodak used to have a billboard (or mural?) in Grand Central Terminal in NYC that bragged that the photo on it was taken on Kodak's own 35mm film... and since it was high up, everybody was viewing it from 20-30 meters away. 😅

300 dpi is for photos you look at super close. A 16x20 in is not that; many photos printed at that size will have "enough detail" at 150dpi. It also depends on the printer, but print has even less of a difference than a screen because you simply cannot zoom in. Here's my favorite video on the subject:

This is actually on the right track. Before I bought my Wrangler and kitted it out, I took the car that I had (Subaru Outback) and took the sort of road trip that I wanted for 6 weeks, and I made things as inconvenient for myself as I could. I brought a ground tent, but stayed in the back of the car most nights which meant shifting stuff around for 5-10 minutes. It was a great way to figure out what stuff I actually used vs what I didn't use and at the end of 6 weeks, if I didn't use something and resented moving it around every day to sleep, that thing was stored and never brought on a road trip again. The Subaru could go most of the places that I wanted, but not all. So I chose one of the few vehicles more capable (Wrangler) and built out my platform system/power to match my preferences and needs. What I have works perfectly for me and every time I'm out camping, I feel like I'm living the dream. Except, you know, when I spend half a day jerryrigging a 125 pound rooftop tent back onto my car after the roof rack almost dropped it on the ground. But for a lot of people, spending 2-3 months in my setup would be absolutely miserable. Have you considered doing a smaller and less ambitious trip with what you have in order to shake out your needs/wants?

For the vehicle, a Landy is a great option. venture4wd has one as his secondary vehicle and a lot of his content lately has been driving it all over the mountains in Arizona. For a trailer to take off-road, you should think about that long and hard before making the jump. I'd rank buying a pull-behind camper as one of the worst decisions I've made in my entire life. The one I got was not specifically an overlanding camper or whatever, but it had decent enough ground clearance - but even as a fairly short trailer (about 15 feet), it plus the tongue basically doubled the length of my car (my Wrangler is about 19 feet long) which is awful when you're on a small dirt road that someone gated off. And that's note even starting to get into how often it broke, the difficulty of repairs, etc. I ended up selling it at a huge loss (bought for $10k, put in about $2-3k in upgrades, sold for about $3-4k) and felt grateful to be rid of the fucking thing. YMMV, of course. Given your plans, you may also want to check out Dan Grec's page/channel. He hit every country in Africa in a Wrangler with Ursa Minor camper shell, a setup similar to venture4wd's beloved Orangie. He also has a lot of thoughts about what is and isn't important. What sort of NAS do you have in mind? Keep in mind that bouncing around on rough roads will have a negative impact on spinning hard drives, even if they're turned off/parked. My solution for longer-term trips is a handful of 4T SSD's and just copy everything to two of them and keep them in different parts of the car (and/or trailer if you have one). I also have some OWC thing that takes two 2.5" SATA SSD's and does hardware RAID-1 - so I use that with 2 4T drives in it. This depends a lot on the rooftop tent and your goals. My hardshell RTT (iKamper Skycamp Mini) sets up and comes down in around 2 minutes and I can leave a pillow and some blankets inside it. That's faster than any ground tent I've used (I've used Coleman pop-ups which set up in about 5 minutes and come down in, realistically, about 10 if you actually pack it back into a bag properly - the bags suck). It also facilitates camping on a pullout in a dirt road where a tent isn't feasible. If you're moving around a lot, it's great. If you're going somewhere for a week at a time and staying there, the extra few minutes in setup/teardown is a lot less annoying. I'm actually going to sell mine this Spring, but not because I don't like the tent itself - but because despite having a heavy-duty Rhino Rack roof rack, after tens of thousands of miles with the tent on the car, the roof rack started falling apart. Two years ago, my camping trip was cut short by it nearly falling off the car (roof rack loosened) and last year, I ended up immediately taking it back off the car (and injuring my arm in the process) because the now-repaired roof rack re-broke, this time requiring a replacement part that Rhino took something like 4 months to ship to me (despite that the rack is still a current product that they are selling). Now I'm revising my platforms in the car so that I can sleep inside. Again, it depends on the use case and where you are! For me, if I'm staying in an established campground, I can use their toilets. If I'm off-grid, I have a Cleanwaste Go, a sturdy folding plastic toilet that can be used either to poop into a hole in the ground or into a little plastic baggie full of what is basically kitty litter. It ain't glamorous, but it works. But if I were trying to camp out in an event center parking lot for a week, my setup sucks. I'd just get a hotel room at that point. 😃

I would not expect to see any real world difference at all between a 45mp FF sensor and a 61mp other than in the most extreme of crops and pixel-peeping in direct side by side tests, ie, 'fuck all'. When I went from Fuji XT3 to OG LUMIX S5, I noticed a marginal difference. I could not have told you in words what that difference was except other than the raw files were a bit 'cleaner' and had a little more latitude? Then going from OG S5 to S1R, I noticed immediately another 'jump', but this time it was more to do with detail as should be expected. Then I went back to 24mp FF for the best part of a year before going to Sony A7RV and I would not call it night and day, but the clarity and latitude in the Sony files is on another level to LUMIX/Nikon 24mp files. After shooting most of last year with the A7RV (and I am talking purely stills here, not shot a single second of video with it) I went back to dabbling with some 24mp FF and they were definitely lacking compared with the 61mp sensor files from the A7RV. So I would expect any 'S2R' to be as equally 'ahead' of any 24mp previous or current gen LUMIX camera and that is one of my 'deal-breakers' for me to chop my A7RV in to get one. And ideally, multiple crop markers as per the current FF LUMIX cameras because I want to shoot in 3:2 aspect ratio with a 2.4:1 and a 9:16 overlay with every single frame. And 61mp, allows me an APSC crop with a 26mp file, with marginal more detail than a FF 24mp file. A 45 or as in the old S1R, 47mp, is about 18mp which was and is OK, but I'd rather have more so I can get the Sigma 28-105mm f2.8 as a genuine 'one & done' lens.

As far as IQ goes, it depends on the presentation. If the intended presentation is a computer/TV screen (which most are these days), it could be argued that anything above 24 megapixels is more about cropping than IQ. 24 megapixels is more than 2x what a 16:9 4K screen can display natively. If the presentation is going to be a 16x20 print at 300 dpi, around 30 megapixels will suffice. For video, in a lot of ways, a high megapixel sensor is less-than-ideal since it will need either a crazy readout speed and fast processor or it will need to result to various forms of binning/skipping.

OK, sorry to hear about the health issues but that then leads me to think a motorhome with a quad bike on trailer is perhaps a better option? First, you have all the proper facilities in one single vehicle, ie, proper bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, office etc. Second, you have an off road vehicle to go off the beaten track with. Motorhomes/campers are a bit of an investment, but quad bikes and trailers are not so much and cheaper than a specialised travel trailer? If it's something VW'ish like a T5/T6, you can get away with it as a main 'family' transport also. Our MH is based on a Citroen Jumper van and though it's an 'off the shelf' pro factory build rather than a custom or self build and it could be used as every day transport, but it's not ideal for that. A 5-5.5m camper could be but 6m (mine) is pushing it a bit. The only thing with campers over motorhomes is you don't get a dedicated bathroom which is fine for short trips, but anything running into weeks, could become an issue very quickly. I used to watch a lot of those van life videos on YouTube and it was hilarious (and ridiculous) just how many of these kids think they can live in a van with no bathroom. Van conversions can and should be built around a bathroom as a very high priority IMO!! Most camper users stay on sites with facilities or the occasional overnight at the coast or similar, but I can park up in a venue car park and be self-contained for up to a week. Of course expeditions can be done on nothing more than a motorbike and tent, but as with all things, where and what is your compromise? My MH is my office, my home and my sanctuary on the road.

My money is on the same 61mp as in the SL3 and the Sony A7RV. There is a second rumoured LUMIX camera supposedly going to be announced in April if the information coming out of a certain mountain shed in the Dolomites is accurate and maybe that will have this 45mp sensor?

Curious as to why as I thought you lived in the UK? "Trip up to Scotland". I used to do a lot of field sports photography and went EVERYWHERE the Landies, Rangies, Shoguns, Landcruisers went in nothing more than my first gen and then a second gen, Nissan X Trail(s). OK, they had Yokohama Geolander tires on them, but that was it and they aren't that serious an off road tire... https://www.grip500.fr/pneu/255-60-18/yokohama-geolandar-x-at-g016-gp1552854?utm_source=compare&utm_medium=google-shopping&utm_campaign=tyre&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAAC7HhBsoc7IWXQh_OvrqL4FevXYJL&gclid=CjwKCAiAqrG9BhAVEiwAaPu5zoxmhHdIXxEk067WnVZ0Ygsd_1i7eqZ1N4iS_HbLgri0YKg97Dgw1RoChx8QAvD_BwE Both very reliable as in never had a single issue with either. But off-road travel trailers, maybe... There's a company I looked at who if I remember correctly, were in Poland who made a really great one, but in the end, I gave up the field sports stuff (couldn't make any money from it) and focused on my wedding work. I had a caravan for 2 years, from 4/5 years ago and will be going into my 3rd season (out of 25 in total) with a compact motorhome this year. The advantage of the motorhome is the second part of that word, - it really is a home away from home (permanent; living/dining/work area, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom) and I spend up to 6 weeks in it on certain trips. It is not suitable for off-road stuff however. It's got some all season mud & snow tires on it, but the reality is they are shit. Or at least combined with the crappy traction control. A dry dirt track is about the limit, though there was this time I got lost in the dark on a rutted woodland track and had to press on as there was zero chance to turn and if I had taken my foot off the gas... There's always a compromise somewhere and various options including a roof top tent. I considered one once and they look fancy, but the reality is, they are stupidly overpriced because you can have a tent on the ground for a fraction of the cost which you can actually stand up, have furniture in, ie, actually 'live' in. I think they are a gimmick other than if you are afraid of scorpions. A 4WD compact motorhome makes most sense but they cost a bomb. On a tight budget, something like a well maintained ex-school run, used 4WD with some decent tires and pretty much any kind of fold out camping trailer makes next most sense because as long as that also has some decent tires, at the end of the day, it's just a fairly lightweight towed trailer and a lot of the articulation happens off the tow hitch so as long as you are not going flat out down endless off road tracks...

As far as action cameras, if it's your own vehicle, I'd use GoPro's adhesive mounts for things like mounting the camera on the underside of the bumper - and it's not just a naive suggestion. I've done exactly that with my own Jeep. At least in the case of the Jeep, there are also screws in the bumper that are intended for mounting things like winches - in my case, I custom-made some mounts with 1/4" and 3/8" screws for mounting camera gear - at least on the front bumper. I also custom-made some mounts to add a 3/8" screw to my roof rack. The driving footage in this video is a mix of bumper cameras and roof rack camera, with a Sony ZV-1 for some of the handheld and car footage and the OG GFX 100 for the rest. You can also get clamps and strong suction cup mounts for less-permanent attachment of gear to the vehicle, just with the caveats that usually come with them, like the spot for the suction cup needs to be clean or you'll lose it with whatever is attached. And the clamp, similarly, needs to be well-secured (lost a cheap action camera (Yi 4K+) in Chile because the clamp apparently got loose and the camera wasn't mounted in a place where I could see it. You don't need a lot of action cameras for this and you don't need the latest/best either. In fact, if a rock knocks off your under-car action camera and it gets lost, you'll feel a lot less bad if it's, for instance, a Hero 10 than a Hero 13. Depending on how smooth you want the footage to be and how dusty the area is, you could also look into something like the movmax blade arm to mount your Osmo Pocket 3 to the car.

Z6iii does seem the obvious choice. Z6ii and OG Z6 have a very nice image but the AF is a bit clunky. Zf is also very good photo and video, especially low light.

Given your background and current gear, then the Nikon Z6III is the very obvious choice here. (heck, even going with a cheaper Nikon Z6II / Z6 / Z50II / Z50 would be an ok idea as well if on a tight budget).

These look incredible.

Thanks so much! I am actually looking at Lifestyle Overland Youtube channel which uses the Lumix GH6, and also Expedition Overland channel too... among a few others. Just starting out, I need to actually get a proper vehicle too with higher ground clearance and more cargo capacity then what I have available in my trunk. One thing I am noticing is that whatever "Overland" channels I watch which are a few there always seem to be at least 2 people taking film duty. So when one person drives for example another will film or use a drone etc.... Sadly I don't have that luxury. I'm under no impression that my stuff is going to be as good as people who have been doing this a long time, but we all have to start somewhere. I am happy with my first attempt but feel that it was a little ad-hoc, rushed and dull.... In honestly I had no idea where I was going either apart from the first week which was planned so things just kinda happened spontaneously - which may or may not be a bad thing....

Its like 18-55mm kit lens situation. Everybody thinks its a junk lens, because they've seen photos taken by that kind of lens, and most of them are not impressive; so they thought its a lens problem. But in reality, the proportion of amateur photographers who were still trying to learn and explore, in total users of that lens, was very high (because it was a kit and shipped with their first DSLR), so what others were seeing wasn't the lens problem, it was users' skill problem. The small group of people who use $30,000 camera, are the same people who know how to extract as much as much as possible from their gear, know how to get perfect lighting, and how to color grade. So when you see a Alexa footage, there is big chance you're seeing a team of elites performance. You see a discipline among elite groups, and its that when they find a winning formula, like the combination of attributes we call "Arri look", they stick with it. Thats how they made us addicted to it; as we were seeing that formula over and over again in many different movies, to the point that we collectively call it "cinematic", like any other formula is either inferior or not legit.