Pretty much all DSLR's are using sensor twice the resolution of 1080P or better these days so undersampling is the defacto standard. I do a lot of music performance work and when I use a DSLR I see the Aliasing errors in the wire mesh of microphone covers.

The reason I even mentioned is that I was thinking of going all DSLR for video and came across that article which is obivously quite negative towards doing that. Basically says our eyes are fooling us.

At the moment I have 3 cameras under consideration besides DSLR's to add to my cluster of cams.

Canon XF-100/105 http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/consumer/products/camcorders/professional_camcorders/xf100

Panasonic AG-AF100 http://www.panasonic.com/business/provideo/ag-af100.asp

Sony HXR-NX70 http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/cat-broadcastcameras/cat-nxcam/product-HXRNX70U

Leaning towards the Panasonic with a Pentax K lens adapter so I can use all my Pentax Lens on it but it is a thousand dollars more.

So opinions?

Aliasing is the thorn in the side for us DSLR users. It wasn't surprising to most of us and it is something we've found ways around. To me, it is like traffic in a big city. Everyone hates it, but it comes with living in a city that offers a lot of other good reasons to live there.

Bigrock - I have moved from using a prosumer HD cam (Sony PMW-EX1) to almost exclusively using DLSR's. I still have my EX1, but will be putting it up for sale in the next week or two. The EX1's "resolution" indeed beats that of my DSLRs (Canon EOS 5D Mark III and Rebel T3i and T2i). The latter two show horrible aliasing. There is a workaround on the T3i, but it comes at the cost of using only a fraction of the sensor (to avoid the downsampling). The 5D Mark III doesn't show the aliasing as badly (barely noticeable), but is fairly soft in comparison to the EX1.

What's my point? It depends on what your needs are. To me, the DSLR aesthetic (especially the 5D's full frame) is more pleasing and more film-like. No, the sharpness isn't there. But the smoothness and other objective and subjective aspects are there: low light capability, choice of lenses, shallow depth of field, etc.... It is simply less 5 o'clock news. I wish I could have both resolution and the buttery look.

In my research, the cameras that have the promise of both are the Canon C300 and Sony FS-100 and FS-700. The FS-100 is in your price range (comparable to the AF100). Why have you excluded it? You could probably get an adapter to use your Pentax lenses on it, too. From my research (I don't have one - I think Paul W does?), it does well in low light and has nice resolution (maybe nearly as good as the EX1). The C300 is about 2x-3x more than the FS-100 and the FS-700 sits in between price-wise, but has some cool features of its own.

The other point about DSLR's that has surprised me and has ultimately convinced me to get rid of my EX1 is that the DSLR is simply less intimidating to the people and subjects that I shoot. It is less obtrusive and more compact. Until I used the DSLR quite a bit, I hadn't fully appreciated this point. I thought I'd only be using my DSLR for staged/planned shoots rather than live, walking around (I don't "run-and-gun") stuff. But, I've found that I PREFER my DSLR (even my T3i) when just walking around. I just love the pictures I get from it.

I am likely to get another 5D Mark III (or perhaps a FS-100 but it doesn't have the same benefits I just mentioned) after selling my EX1 and associated gear.

Those are my opinions and they're probably worth what you paid for them! Good luck with whichever route you choose.

I was considering the FS-100. It's about $500 more. The AF100 after the software upgrade ($250) is very comparable to it. The AF100 seems more functional than the FS100. I don't know personally how they compare video quality wise but I would have expected them to be similar.

The AF100 is a micro four-thirds sensor, as I understand it. The Sony is a Super-35mm, roughly the same size as an APS-C sensor, I think. This makes the Sony FS-100's sensor about 75% larger in area than the AF100's. Though not the only factor, the larger the sensor, the better the low-light capability and more flexible it is with respect to depth of field. Otherwise, they should be quite similar and if the AF100's feature set includes things you need, that definitely makes trading off the sensor advantage, if any, toward the AF100. Have you seen any of Philip Bloom's "camera face-offs" or reviews? If not, you might check them out.

I only have experience with the Nikon D7000 DSLR, which normally has a 18-200 zoom mounted. I only use it to shoot videos when our video camera can't be used for one reason or another.

I find the Nikon to be heavy, clumsy to hold, no auto focus as the scene changes or zooming (have to half-press the shutter release), and no viewfinder during videoing (handy in bright light).

I find a video camera to be so much better ergonomically for taking hand held videos.

I see that Laurence has some negatives to using a DSLR for videos too, but he is a more advanced user than me.

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=819860&Replies=12

I got this Tamron 17-50 lens because it can do an f-stop of 2.8 though it's entire range with image stabilization. In playing with it, I've noticed that it can go way further the other way too with a smallest aperture of f-32. It seems to me like a really small aperture like that might soften the image enough to get rid of moiré on wide shots of buildings with bricks, shingles or plank type siding. I know that f22 which was as small as the kit lens could go wasn't enough to get rid of moiré. F-32 might be though. I will try this tomorrow.

One thing I've been doing to combat moiré on the wide shots is to use infinite focus and then add a predictable amount of blur by playing with the f-stop. The problem with aliasing and moiré is that you can't judge it in your viewfinder. You can only see it when you get home and pop the footage in your computer. Infinite focus with a small f-stop already gets rid of a lot of moiré and still looks quite sharp, but there is still too much moiré for my taste. As you increase the f-stop you gradually add softness and the moiré starts to go away. The exact amount of blur this will introduce varies by the lens and distance. In this test I determined that an f-stop of about f-11 was a good compromise with the Nikon kit lens that came with my D-5100:

https://vimeo.com/36425051

However, on this video I used infinite focus at f-11 to avoid moiré on the bricks in the first shot and I feel it is too soft:

https://vimeo.com/46064085

Another thing I will do is shoot stills for my wide shots. You have to wait for that moment when there are no cars, people or birds in mid-flight. Putting a cRGB to sRGB color corrector on an animated still will make the still and video color match better.

You said "The AF100 is a micro four-thirds sensor, as I understand it. The Sony is a Super-35mm, roughly the same size as an APS-C sensor, I think. This makes the Sony FS-100's sensor about 75% larger in area than the AF100's."

Umm not quite true the AF-100 sensor is 17.8mm x 10mm, and the FS100 sensor is 23.6 mm x 13.3mm so yes it is bigger but not 75%. Th AF100 has a lot of nice features like builtin Nd's SDI outputs, better manual controls. The FS-100 has a super goofy viewfinder that seems kinda of awkward to me.

Here's a good article that compares them to each other: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?260461-FS100-and-AF100-compared.

"the AF-100 sensor is 17.8mm x 10mm, and the FS100 sensor is 23.6 mm x 13.3mm so yes it is bigger but not 75%"

23.6 x 13.3 / (17.8 x 10) = 1.763 or 76.3% bigger by area

Well I just shot some tests this morning and wow! I bought this lens for it's large aperture but I'm going to make just as much use of it's small aperture. With an aperture of f-32 I can see no moiré on the shingles of my house at all on a wide shot. The moiré seems to disappear well before I get the aperture this small. The reason is that the small apertures can't optically resolve that much detail. Bad for photographs, not so bad for a video image that is skipping more pixels than it is capturing.

So it seems to me that my new solution for wide shots of brick/shingle/siding buildings is just to stop the image way down and use infinite focus.

Actually the sensor is 17.3 x 13.3 so yes it is smaller. But it's not just about sensor size, it's about the whole package and Panasonic has done a better job here. My main concern about this camera and the Canon is that they are two year old units. Panasonic haas released a software update to the Panasonic that brings 1080-60P and 28mbs.

I've been using the AF-100 for a year and a half and have been thrilled with it paired with a good set of Nikon primes. I've always been a fan of Panasonic's colorimetry over Sony cameras and the AF100 has the Panasonic "look", but that's totally subjective. I haven't been disappointed with its basic functionality in the field (tripod or crane mounted) and not sure I would be happy with what the FS-100 offers.
What I HATE about the AF100 is the eyepiece located center body rather than side offset. This stupid compromise for what probably comes down to cheaper tooling issues makes handheld, even with decent rigs, always painful. The LCD viewfinder's focus assist functions (peaking and outlining) are not as precise as the eyepiece finder - in lower light conditions sometimes you won't even achieve peaking on the LCD while it's clear where focus is on the eyepiece. I curse every time I use it handheld.

So maybe the question should be what's the best non-dslr camera in the 3k to 5k range. I would like the functionality of the Panasonic AF100, the big sensor of the Sony FS100, the 50mbs 4:2:2 codec of the Canon XF-100, and the enviromental sealing of the Sony HXR-NX70. No I am not asking too much, fat chance though.

"No I am not asking too much, fat chance though"

Every camera is a compromise and which way the compromises are made depends on the intended role of the device.
The XF-100 seems a quite capable camera as is its sibling, the XA-10. I would try to get a 3 chip camera, three smaller sensors brings benefits such as longer zoom lenses and smaller body size. Also consider ergonomics. A button in the wrong place that'll confuse you is something you have to live with for a long time. No matter how good other things are an out of focus or over/under exposed shot is just that. Missing a shot while you futz around is also a missed shot.

Bob.