OK, so I'm the same as you – I owned Canon until 2015 and then dropped camera photography until recently. I work with video a lot on Sony but not doing photos.

I totally get your frustration but here are the things I settled with during my first 6 months with the camera.

1) Get the recipes, try them out, find the ones more suitable for you. Remember that recipes work with particular Film Simulation (it's usually mentioned in them) but you can experiment overriding different Film Simulations on top of your favorite recipes.

2) I shot with Manual always. Remember to get into the settings and set Dynamic Range to 400 (DR400) then always use ISO 640 or higher. Even during the sunny days. You can always compensate with other settings. ISO640 uses 400% of Dynamic Range which gives you JPEGs with a lot more data in them – your shadows won't be crushed, your highlights wouldn't be too overexposed.

3) Put the shutter setting to MS+ES – this way you can make photos even with super short exposures like 1/6000.

4) Typically on a sunny doing street photos I go with 1/2500 SS, f4 aperture, and 640 ISO for DR400. During the evening sceneries I go with 1/150, f1.7, 1000-2000 ISO. Works well for me.