BUYERS GUIDE

Lowdown on the Sony Alpha 1 Camera

HThe new full-frame mirrorless camera from Sony - the best Sony camera you can currently buy! ave you heard about the new Alpha 1 camera that Sony’s releasing? If you haven’t, that’s probably understandable. There are plenty of other things to distract one’s attention these days, not the least of which is a global pandemic that’s been going on for over a year.

But as they say, every dark cloud has a silver lining, and one silver lining for many of us has been that the pandemic has given us a chance to reconnect with our hobbies and pastimes, including photography.

As you’ve worked on practicing and improving your photography, you may have also started thinking about getting a new camera. If that’s the case, then the one we’re going to look at today is a real gem.

Simply put, the Alpha 1 is now the “best” camera that Sony has ever made. I only put the word “best” in quotation marks because I’m sure that someone could quibble with that classification because it’s not the cheapest or most compact, so therefore it can’t reasonably be called the “best.” Nevertheless, in terms of performance, technology, and design, the Alpha 1 is Sony’s new flagship camera, and it’s certainly aiming to compete with other top-of-the-line cameras from Sony’s competitors like Nikon and Canon.

I’m trying to think of one of my trademarked Bad Analogies to describe the Alpha 1 but for some reason, it’s hard to come up with one this time. The best I can think of is that Sony is like a train that’s been chugging along and improving each new model bit by bit, and they’ve been picking up a lot of devotees along the way - and I include myself among the passengers on the Sony Fanboy Train.

As a result, while most of Alpha 1’s specs that we’ll look at in a moment are certainly more impressive than what you’d get from earlier cameras, they don’t necessarily represent a sea change in terms of performance or design.

In other words, this camera is simply the logical culmination of a camera concept that started with the mirrorless a7 and a9 series. All the features are good and many are great, but there’s not some new, groundbreaking feature like a camera body that’s made from recycled popsicle sticks, but is still somehow bulletproof and fireproof.

Let’s start with the essentials: The Alpha 1 is a full-frame, mirrorless camera that is compatible with Sony’s E-mount interchangeable lenses. It can shoot 50-MP still photos at up to 30 frames per second during continuous/ burst shooting.

It can record 8K video at 30 frames per second, or 4K video at 120 frames per second. The latter stat is arguably more useful and impressive for most users, since shooting in 4K means that you can produce great slow-motion videos (and you won’t have to deal with the massive 8K files). Either way, though, the Alpha 1 promises to give us some awesome videos, not to mention the amazing still photos.

The Alpha 1’s autofocus is top-notch, running its calculations 120 times per second. The auto-tracking has been improved over previous models, and it even lets you select a real-time eye autofocus mode based on three profiles: human, animal, or bird. That’s one of those sentences that makes you wish you could travel 100 years back in time and say it, just to confuse the hell out of anyone listening to you.

The electronic viewfinder is also amazing. Although it’s just a little screen, it packs a huge punch. You can even set it to different resolutions, one of which will give you a 240-fps refresh rate. Strictly speaking, that’s probably more resolution than your eye needs or can even process, but it’s still cool to have the option. There is also no “blackout,” which is the quick black “flash” that generally comes between shots when you shoot a burst of photos.

One other thing that you have, at least if you don’t want it, is a shutter noise. You can set it to make a clicking sound if you’d like, but you can also set the shutter to be completely silent if you’re in a situation where you don’t want to make any noise. Although the Alpha 1 has options to use either its mechanical shutter or its electronic shutter, the electronic shutter seems to be the one that’s quite a bit more impressive and capable, and likely predicts the eventual phasing out of mechanical shutters sometime in the future.

One other notable inner feature is the 5-axis optical in-body stabilization. Sony claims that this can give you up to 5.5 stops of compensation. So, although you can surely manage to take some shaky, blurry, or generally crappy pictures, Sony is going to make you work to get those bad shots.

Let’s now be superficial and move from the inside of the Alpha 1 to the outer body. The overall look will seem very familiar, as it’s built extremely similar to the a7 and a9 series. There are a few buttons and dials in slightly different places, but the controls should be easily understandable to any Sony users. The media connections and storage are also all top-notch, including dual CF Express card slots (which are also backwards compatible with SD cards), built-in WiFi, and connections for highspeed USB 3.2, HDMI, and ethernet.

The buttons are almost all customizable, with 164 functions that can be assigned to 17 different buttons and dials. What’s more, the Alpha 1 uses the newer Sony menus, which are much better and more intuitive than previous ones. Additionally, you can use the touchscreen to select options from the menus, which you couldn’t do in the past.

The touchscreen is one of the few weak points of this camera, although even it isn’t all that bad. The only real issue with it is that it just tilts up and down, but it’s not fully articulating. Sony and other camera manufacturers obviously have the technology and know-how to make a screen that can flip to the side or top of the camera, allowing you more versatility when composing shots, especially ones that include yourself. While it’s a slight disappointment that this screen only tilts, it’s probably a disappointment that I’d be more than willing to accept, considering that it’s not that big of a problem, in the grand scheme of things.

At this point, you’re probably thinking, “This sounds great, but there’s got to be a catch, right?” Indeed, there is a catch: the price. The Alpha 1 will set you back $6,500. I probably should have mentioned that earlier in the article, but I didn’t want you to laugh incredulously and skip to the next article without at least giving this camera a fair shake.

In all honesty, the Alpha 1 expensive, and it’s probably not for most of us. However, if you’re a professional photographer and/or money is no object, then you really should give the Alpha 1 a closer look.

It’s certainly the best Sony camera that you can get now, and it can more than easily compete with similar cameras from Nikon, Fuji, or Canon. It’s also an extremely capable camera for shooting video, whereas earlier Sony models weren’t always as well-rounded when it came to shooting both video and still images.