HEAD TO HEAD

When it comes to speed thrillers, does a fast SLR or an SLT give you sportier performance? Let battle commence…

We pit the Canon EOS 1D X II against the Sony a99 II to see how they both fare for action-packed shooting

Everybody knows that, money no object, a top-flight SLR like the Canon 1D X II is the best choice for fastpaced action, sports and wildlife photography. But is that really true?

One killer feature you’ll need is a rapid continuous shooting rate, so you can nail the definitive moment as an action sequence unfolds. It might be anything from colliding racing cars or a strike on goal, to the wings of a flying bird being at precisely the desired angle. You’ll also need a fast and infallible autofocus system, to keep up with the action even during rapid-fire shooting. As we’ll see in the following pages, an SLT (Single Lens Translucent) camera with a fixed mirror, like the Sony a99 II, has potential advantages over a conventional SLR in both drive rate and continuous autofocus.

When you feel the need for speed, you generally have to compromise on megapixel count. The 1D X II is typical of SLRs with a very fast drive rate, in that its 20.2MP image sensor has less megapixels than most entrylevel cameras. By stark contrast, the a99 II boasts a whopping 42.4MP, despite almost matching the Canon for maximum drive rate.

Naturally, when you’re shooting endless bursts of images at a sporting event, massively high-resolution images and giant file sizes can be a pain, but it’s nice to have those extra megapixels in reserve. A greater concern is how a bigger megapixel count impacts on high-ISO image quality, when you need to maintain fast shutter speeds for freezing action under dull lighting. Let’s see how our two contenders compare.