SONY ALPHA A99 II

Comparatively compact and lightweight, the Sony nevertheless packs a punch and shoehorns in some exotic high-tech trickery

What the Sony gains in being compact, lightweight and easy to manage, it loses in the lack of duplicated controls for portrait orientation shooting. Add the optional battery grip (£200/$300) and the overall package is about the same size as the Canon body, and the relatively limited battery life of 390 shots is effectively doubled.

Amazingly, the Sony has more than double the Canon’s megapixel count, yet almost matches its continuous drive rate, delivering ultra-high-res stills at up to 12fps. However, buffer depth is relatively limited at 63 shots in JPEG mode and 24 in RAW mode (54 compressed RAW).

The camera feels strongly built and well laid out, with useful customisable control buttons and easy access to important settings, although the joystick-like controller on the rear panel feels a little imprecise. The articulated rear screen is a welcome addition for Live View and movie shooting, but it’s a shame it’s not a touchscreen.

Autofocus is deadly accurate in singleshot mode but slightly less reliable than the Canon’s system for tracking moving subjects, even after tweaking settings for AF drive speed and sensitivity. It’s also a bit less able to keep tabs on subjects that move erratically.

For high-speed drive rates, the Sony feels a lot smoother in operation than the Canon, thanks to the mirror not flapping around.

This also helps to avoid images being blurred by mirror-bounce, which can be a hazard with long telephoto shots. Better still, the Sony features five-axis, sensor-shift image stabilisation, with an effectiveness of around 2.5 stops. That’s not as good as the four-stop rating of the current Canon 70-200mm f2.8 telephoto zoom, but there’s no stabilisation available at all when using the Canon with its own-brand 24-70mm f2.8 lens.

Image quality is excellent overall, with stunning resolution of fine detail and texture and accurate colour rendition. High-ISO noise suppression is impressive, considering the high megapixel count and that some light is lost through the translucent mirror, but the Sony loses out to the Canon at sensitivities above ISO 6400.