Nice article, doesn't pull punches. My company has been using the Sennheiser G3 series for years, and they're pretty durable. Lectros are top-shelf but cost a lot. For personal projects, I bought the Saramonic dual-channel system; it's similar to the Sony dual-channel setup, but the Saramonic costs $399. It's performed waaaay beyond my expectations, check it out if you're on a tight budget.

I edited in 2K, 2048x1080, so why should I export at 1998x1080?

Hi Charles, I wonder if you were sending files to the same theater in West Virginia where I showed my movie a couple of weeks ago. I did use the DCP Transfer from Cinematiq and it worked fine. I'm running Premiere and exported via the Wraptor 2K (2048x1080) settings (with 5.1 audio) and it worked fine. There does seem to be a glitch in the export from Premiere in that it grossly overestimates the exported file sizes (an 80-minute movie required almost a terabyte, according to the estimate) but it was really only about 40 gigabytes.

I am screening the film in Atlanta this weekend at a "newer" theater. I hope it works as well there. But I'm taking a blu-ray just in case.

If you're on a REALLY low budget, use your iPhone. Personally, I don't care for that approach but it's increasing in acceptance. But really, the lower-end Sonys like the a6300 are under $1000 and the image quality coming out of them is excellent. Good lens choices also. But they're susceptible to rolling shutter, so be careful and don't bounce them around very much.

I finished a feature (78 minutes) recently and I learned quite a bit along the way. Source footage was UHD from two Sony mirrorless cameras. I first created a sequence from each scene and edited them accordingly. Then I copied and pasted into sequences that consisted of several scenes, and did a pretty extensive color pass. The real time-saver was that I set up the scene group sequences in DNxHR HQ 2K, which meant that the preview file format and codec match the output format. So after rendering, I exported .mxf files of the scene groups and put them (sans audio*) in a layer on top of the files I just edited. The effect is that there is NO rendering required after this point. The line across the top of the sequence isn't green, it isn't yellow, THERE ISN'T ONE. Next time you export, it only takes as long as it takes to write the file to your drive.
* There's a bug in Premiere that when you export .mxfs, regardless of the export settings, each audio track is a mixdown of the project as a whole. So deal with the audio separately, then do a final sequence where you line up your group .mxfs and drop your final audio files under them.

Okay, looks good. Just curious about some of the settings:
- Was the autofocus speed set to Standard? Did you try any with it set to the slower speed?
- How big of an autofocus point were you using? The smallest?
- Did you use the touchscreen to move the focus point while shooting?
- Were you shooting wide open all the time (f4) with the 24-105?