When things go wrong, or don't go as expected, 99% of the time it's the person behind the camera who's bad, not the camera. This is especially true for an amateur.
To put it bluntly, the Blazar Apex's autofocus is plenty fast and accurate for me. I was expecting the autofocus to be as responsive as our eyesight. I feel like a moron.
I did fidget around with the camera setting, but eventually got lost in Sony's ability to fine tune just about anything. There are so many ways you could adjust the focusing and the tracking, in the end I simply set it in the centre and just get it done with.
For the things I shoot, AF is not a must. But I'd like to experiment around, like mounting the camera on an electric slider and do the Dolly zoom. Doing the dolly with a manual lens is a mission impossible for me. So I welcome the AF, it's always nice to have options.
The Rendering: Blazar Apex is a winner
Both Blazar Apex and Sirui Anamorphic claimed to have a 1.33X de-squeeze factor. But a few YouTubers say the Apex is, in fact, about 1.5X. I have to agree to this. The Apex does render a little stretchier, makes the subject a tad more skinnier and taller. So I do prefer the Blazar over the Sirui in terms of the rendering.
Top camera NATO Handle
The top handle is an old one from Smallrig, I got it as a bundle when playing dress up for the BMPCC4K. The handle is being switched back and forth between these two cameras. Things were fine until the Blazar came into play, the NATO clamp would hit the len's aperture ring. Be mindful of this, pull out the lever to adjust the position so as to avoid scratching the lens unnecessarily