SONY ALPHA 9 III
Packed with innovative technology, this Sony camera could change photography as we know it forever, says James Artaius www.sony.co.uk £6,099/$5,998
The Sony A9 III is, hands down, the most advanced camera ever made. While it isn’t yet being referred to as the company’s new flagship, the A9 series has traditionally occupied that position. And as mighty as the Sony A1 is, its specs honestly look kind of quaint compared to the A9 III. The best sports and action cameras are routinely the launchpad for manufacturers’ bleeding-edge tech, but I’ve never seen a camera with as much earth-shatteringly futuristic technology as the Sony A9 III. Terms like ‘game changer’ are banded about liberally these days, but this is a camera that really could transform the way we use cameras.
With headlines including the world’s first full-frame global shutter image sensor, 120fps continuous shooting at full resolution (24.5MP) JPEG and raw, and the ability to shoot with a shutter speed of 1/80,000 sec, this is a camera made of pure photographic muscle. For those who haven’t come across the concept of a global shutter, essentially it exposes whole frames on the sensor at the same time, rather than line-byline, scanning left-to-right or from top-to-bottom, the way traditional sensors do. The result is that rolling shutter – the phenomenon where non-horizontal straight lines (whether they’re golf clubs, baseball bats, telegraph poles or buildings) appear warped and distorted when shot at high electronic speed – is eliminated.
That global readout dovetails with the A9 III’s second most amazing feat: a maximum shutter speed of 1/80,000 sec. On the photographic side, this makes flash sync speeds extinct. It’s simply so fast that it can sync with flash at all speeds, making not just standard speeds
redundant (such as 1/250 sec), but also rendering high-speed sync technology completely superfluous. There is a temporary caveat here, which is that the camera cannot shoot at 1/80,000 sec in continuous mode; here, it maxes out at 1/16,000 sec. However, Sony says that its first firmware update, which is due around March, will bring continuous shooting all the way up to 1/80,000 sec.
What else does the global shutter do? It gives you the ability to shoot continuous bursts of stills at 120fps. Yes, the Nikon Z 8 and Z 9 can do this, but only with 11MP JPEGs; the A9 III, however, can rattle off 120fps images at full 24.6MP resolution, in 14-bit JPEG and raw, blackout-free, with full autofocus and autoexposure.
The only realistic way of testing an elite-level sports camera is to shoot elite-level sports – so I torture-tested the A9 III at an Olympic training facility, photographing teams as they prepared for this summer’s Paris games. With a lone subject in an empty space, the AF acquisition and tracking were flawless, keeping the athlete in focus whether facing they were the camera or fully contorting in the middle of a move.
Overall, I have to say that the A9 III’s autofocus system is absolutely incredible. Bearing in mind that I was blasting away at up to 120fps and up to 120p in 4K, for the AF to keep up at all is remarkable enough. For it to be as resoundingly robust and subjectsticky as it is, it’s actually pretty
IT’S NO SURPRISE TO SEE THAT THE A9 III LOOKS AND FEELS MUCH LIKE THE A9 II
WITH HEADLINES INCLUDING THE WORLD’S FIRST FULL-FRAME GLOBAL SHUTTER, THIS IS A CAMERA MADE OF PURE PHOTOGRAPHIC MUSCLE
mind-blowing. The only occasional issue I had was side-on shots, where acquisition took a fraction longer. High-jump subjects also posed a challenge, as the AF simply didn’t recognise the human body shape in such an unusual position.
It’s a running gag that all Alphas look and feel the same, so it’s no surprise that the A9 III looks and feels much like the A9 II before it – which is to say it looks pretty and feels great in the hand – but with slightly refined ergonomics. This is mainly in the form of the beefier grip, which certainly offers much more purchase and a better hand-hold when using big lenses. The back of the camera is virtually identical apart from a different graphic on the record button. The top plate sees the most changes, with photo, video and S&Q now removed from the mode dial and placed on a collar switch surrounding it. I actually found this a little cumbersome in the heat of the moment, when I wanted to flick between stills and video,
and it’s not helped by the slightly awkward dexterity that’s required to simultaneously depress the lock button on top of the dial.
There will be some who scoff at the specs, questioning the need for a 1/80,000 sec shutter or the point of 120fps shooting. And no doubt, there will also be naysayers at the other end of the spectrum, berating the