Sony Alpha 9 £4,500/$4,500 (body only)
Canon and Nikon look out! This camera could topple the twin titans of professional sports photography
Just when we thought the Sony Alpha 99 II was the ultimate camera for continuous shooting and autofocus performance, it gets the rug pulled out from under it by a rival – and it’s another Sony.
In many respects, these two camera lines are in direct competition. We wondered how long Sony’s ageing Alpha system would be allowed to keep its technological lead over the mirrorless A7 series: the Alpha 9 is our answer.
The A99 II still wins for outright resolution – 42MP versus the A9’s 24MP, but the A9 thrashes it with its 20fps continuous shooting speed (with AE and AF tracking), massive buffer capacity (362 JPEGs, 241 raw files) and an on-sensor autofocus system with no fewer than 693 AF points covering 93% of the image area.
The A9 is an out-and-out action specialist, sacrificing resolution for speed in the same way as the Canon EOS-1D X Mark II and the Nikon D5. These two professional DSLR workhorses have had the world of pro sports photography to themselves for some time now. They may not have been particularly rattled by the A99 II, but the A9 is different.
This is not just because of its speed and the sophistication of its autofocus system. It’s different because when it’s running at 20 frames per second it’s completely silent. In theory, the A9 could let you shoot at sporting events, musical performances and speeches where any other camera would be banned.
It’s all made possible with an electronic shutter mechanism that has a third crucial advantage – no screen blackout. With any camera that uses a mechanical shutter, the screen blacks out for an instant during each exposure. This gives the autofocus less of a ‘window’ to work in during continuous shooting, and makes it harder for the photographer to follow a moving subject in the viewfinder. With the A9’s electronic shutter mode, however, there is no screen blackout, even when shooting
at 20 frames per second. The only penalty is a drop in the viewfinder’s refresh rate from 120fps to 60fps, but a minor increase in screen lag is surely a small price to pay for continuous and seamless viewing.
The A9’s performance has been made possible by Sony’s cutting-edge ‘stacked’ sensor technology, with integral memory, backed up by a Bionz X image processor to deliver what Sony says is a 20x faster readout speed and a performance “far exceeding SLRs”.
The A9 also benefits from Sony’s in-body five-axis stabilisation system. This is in addition to the image stabilisers built into some of Sony’s pro lenses, such as the new FE 70-200mm f/2.8 GM OSS, one of the lenses used in our tests.
Movies, of course, are a big feature in any new Sony camera. The A9 can shoot 4K UHD video with full pixel readout without pixel binning – in other words, instead of combining pixels to produce 4K resolution, it uses the sensor’s full resolution, then ‘downsamples’ it by a factor of 2.4 for better detail rendition. The autofocus system plays its part here, with an AF area extended to almost that of stills mode and a reduced ‘slow’ focus speed for smoother slow focus effects while filming.
We said at the start that the A7/A9 series and the older Alpha SLTs were in competition, but there is some crossover. The A9 can use Alpha mount lenses via Sony’s LA-EA3 adaptor, which enables the full 693-point AF system and shooting at up to 10fps with AF tracking. So although there are still some gaps in Sony’s professional lens range, particularly for super-telephoto primes, there are a couple of big A-mount lenses that will do the job for the time being. The adaptor also offers a way for SLT users to transition to the E-mount system of the A7 and A9. Build and handling The first surprise is that the A9 is no larger than the A7 – the only difference is a couple of extra
millimetres in the thickness of the body. We’re used to pro DSLRs with the heft of a brick, so this is quite an achievement. While Sony’s full-frame bodies are tiny, its lenses are not. Using the new 70-200mm f/2.8 G brings this home – with a small camera attached to the back of this monster lens, the balance feels a little bit wrong.
Sony fans, not surprisingly, don’t find this a problem, but for
The A9’s images are super-sharp and the resolution is easily a match for its main rivals
those migrating from a high-spec DSLR, it could prove off-putting. There is a solution, however – the Sony VG-C3EM battery grip. It increases the height of the camera, offers a duplicate set of vertical shooting controls and holds two NP-FZ100 batteries.
The size of the body means there’s not an awful lot of space for the controls; Sony has done well to squeeze them on without making the camera feel cramped. The drive mode and AF mode dials are stacked on the left side of the top plate; each has a locking button. Over on the right is the main mode dial, the exposure compensation dial and C1 and C2 custom buttons.
In addition to these, there are C3 and C4 buttons on the back of the camera, with 72 different functions you can assign to each. You can create your own custom My Menu, and save seven sets of registered settings – three to the camera, four to a memory card. It’s a lot to take in – but it does provide an opportunity to get the A9 working exactly how you’re used to if you’re migrating from another brand.
The autofocus system is complex too, but comprehensible enough. Wide mode finds a subject automatically within the whole scene, Zone mode narrows this down a bit, while Center mode uses the central AF point. There’s also a Flexible Spot you can position over small subjects and an Expand Flexible Spot option if the camera’s struggling to focus.
In Continuous AF mode, the camera continues to focus on your selected subject, and you choose the focus area depending on how predictable or erratic the subject movement is. It’s also possible to ‘register’ specific focus points and assign them to a function button.
For all its complexity, the A9’s AF system is not that difficult to get to grips with. The real revelation comes the first time you use it in the 20fps continuous shooting mode with no viewfinder blackout. That’s when the A9’s potential becomes obvious.
The A9 makes a discreet electronic ‘shutter’ sound by default to give photographers confirmation that the camera is actually doing something, and it also helps you time your burst shooting more effectively. To switch to fully silent operation when you need it, you simply disable the audio feedback in the menus.
But what about the A9’s ‘quad-VGA’ viewfinder? Does its 120fps refresh rate and 3,686k-dot resolution truly replicate the look of an optical ’finder? Not quite. There’s no real lag in regular shooting, and the lack of screen blackout in highspeed continuous shooting is a tremendous step forward over regular cameras, but you can sometimes see pixellated ‘staircasing’ in diagonal lines and while an EVF shows you the scene as the camera will capture it, that’s not always helpful. In high-contrast lighting, you may have to twiddle the exposure settings to see what detail exists in the shadows and highlights, whereas with an optical viewfinder you can do this instantly with your naked eye. Performance The A9’s continuous shooting performance is genuinely awesome. Individually, the frame rate, buffer capacity and zero viewfinder blackout
are impressive – but when you put them together, the shooting experience is transformed.
For our shots of gymnasts, staged by Sony, the Zone mode was very effective because the movement of the subjects was predictable. For our own experiments, with faster, more erratic subjects, the Wide mode was just as effective, finding our subject and following it doggedly.
However, the AF system does seem to need a decent area of highcontrast detail to lock on to. Its speed of acquisition and continuous focusing accuracy when shooting moving cars was very good. We got sharp results even with instant ‘reaction’ shots.
With ‘softer’ subjects, or small objects against a diffuse background, it ran into problems. The A9 simply couldn’t focus on a stormy sky, even though the clouds and clear sky beyond were well-defined, and struggled with small objects against the same sky. It also had a panic attack capturing the chromework and paint job of a classic car in sunlight with bright, specular highlights, and only managed to lock on after we pre-focused on a nearby object a similar distance away. Maybe it was the 70-200mm f/2.8 G Master lens we were shooting with.
This was annoying, but given the AF’s speed and accuracy with regular subjects, it wouldn’t put us off too much. All cameras have foibles.
The 24MP sensor might seem like a step down compared to the A7R II, but the A9’s images are super-sharp and the resolution is easily a match for its main rivals, the EOS-1D X Mark II and the D5. High-ISO performance is competitive too. JPEGs taken at ISO 25,600 show noise and a loss of detail, as you’d expect, but the overall quality is good – the lower resolution and larger photosites really pay off here. If you shoot raw and use Adobe Camera Raw you get tight, hard noise but even better detail – and you can choose your own balance between noise reduction and definition.
Some reviewers have questioned the A9’s dynamic range. Our lab tests reveal it’s a whisker behind the EOS-1D X Mark II and similar to the D5. In real-world shooting we found it to be fine. It’s possible to pull back highlight detail in raw files in Adobe Camera Raw and shadows seem to come up very well too.