To play devils advocate… and I responded with this on your Facebook post but I’ll place it here as well.
Doesn’t physics dictate that once depth of field is “normalized” across sensor sizes that the optics eventually become nearly the same size given equal flange distance and aperture sizes? There are examples of smaller lenses that can cover a FF sensor without issue on the photo side and extremely large ones like the Zeiss Otis or most Sigma Art based lenses. One of the reasons that FF lenses on the photo sizes have began to get larger is to optimize them so that the projection is much larger than needed to get optimal performance and avoid the edges of the lens where performance is worse. Consequently this is why many modern lens design projections will also cover the cropped medium format sensors. In some ways the cinema side is doing the same sense there is no agreed upon digital standard for what is FF/LF. Whether one wants to use 36×24 (which ironically is considered FF/small format in the photo world and not to be confused with half frame 18×24), or go with the Arri LF sizes or the Red VV or the Alexa 65 sizes… there’s broad terminology for “LF.” So essentially manufacturers have taken a deliberate step to make lenses cover more than they need to and the byproduct is that modern lenses are larger than they need to be. We see more lenses advertising image circle projections of 46.5mm where traditional FF requires about 43.3mm. We see even with S35 that companies are pushing the image projections out to over 31mm when traditional S35 would be covered with a little over 28mm I believe.
Now if this trend continues, remains to be seen for larger sensors when/if computer aided designs begin to enter the cinema world to electronically correct optical flaws. In any case there’s a market for both FF and S35 sized imaging sensors. Pixel pitch is a thing as is imaging area. Sensor generations are a thing too in a way that modern Micro 4/3 sensors probably outperform FF sensors from 10 years ago in both light gathering sensitivity and color retention. People get too caught up in the idea of shallow DoF and that’s fine but light gathering and larger sensors are the best reasons to choose a larger sensor - given that we are talking about like for like generationally. Generationally, all things being equal, one can push a larger sensor a bit farther and have a cleaner image with less noise - if that matters. Also businesses are in it to make money and there seems to be a huge growth opportunity in a largely shrinking (by the numbers) camera market.
So I don’t care either way… I do t see myself buying a S35 camera ever but. Can see myself cropping my Edge 8K to the 6K or 4K S35 mode in order to use certain lenses if the mood strikes me.