Off Brand: Sony Announces the A9

[ahsanford]

Wow, amazing stats on paper.

I agree with what others have said about the small grip. When you hold the camera for hours at a time with a 400 f/2.8 ii on it you appreciate the large form, grip and easy to rotate from horizontal to vertical with duplicate buttons - even when it is mounted on a monopod.

I am not going to sell my gear for this, but maybe Canon is not targeting me. I am middle aged, so maybe Sony is targeting the newer, younger pros who have not got so much gear. If I were younger and starting out or in my 20s or even 30s I would definitely be looking at this and the glass available.

In fairness, Sony is selling a 'grip extender' to get you more finger grip vertically, something in the past I've thought of making out of sugru for my 5D3 if it didn't block battery cover, but that isn't going to solve either the big/heavy lens burden or the tight finger-to-lens space I previously spoke of.

- A

 

[3kramd5]

Wow, amazing stats on paper.

I agree with what others have said about the small grip. When you hold the camera for hours at a time with a 400 f/2.8 ii on it you appreciate the large form, grip and easy to rotate from horizontal to vertical with duplicate buttons - even when it is mounted on a monopod.

I am not going to sell my gear for this, but maybe Canon is not targeting me. I am middle aged, so maybe Sony is targeting the newer, younger pros who have not got so much gear. If I were younger and starting out or in my 20s or even 30s I would definitely be looking at this and the glass available.

In fairness, Sony is selling a 'grip extender' to get you more finger grip vertically, something in the past I've thought of making out of sugru for my 5D3 if it didn't block battery cover, but that isn't going to solve either the big/heavy lens burden or the tight finger-to-lens space I previously spoke of.

- A

And in fairness that's an embarrassing kludge. They should have made the body bigger.

 

[ahsanford]

And in fairness that's an embarrassing kludge. They should have made the body bigger.

+1000. My point from the beginning. I'm just trying to give an F letter grade on the body decision a kind D- grading based on the extender.

The 'have cake and eat it too' line is the A7 line -- small but loaded with tech. But the A9 specs and pricing seem aimed at people that will only put f/1.4 primes and f/2.8 zooms on it. Give them a body to wield that big glass appropriately!

- A

 

[3kramd5]

It's kinda like the apple iPhone antenna attenuation death grip. Arbitrary allegiance to a form factor requires an add on for comfortable use.

Dumb.

 

[NancyP]

L Bracket!

 

[Sator]

And if there's any issue with this, then it's a non-starter. The mechanical shutter is not a viable fall back, as it apparently tops out at 5 fps.

If this is true and the mechanical shutter limits you to shooting at 5fps, it could be a problem shooting action because the electronic shutter can introduce motion artefact. Isn't the point of this camera to shoot sports and wildlife? It's not meant to do macro or architectural photography of still life subjects at 20fps after all.

Next, mirrorless cameras are still exhibiting autofocus performance fall off with longer apertures. It's all very well conducting an AF test shooting your dog running towards you with a 100mm lens, but if what you intend to use this for is shooting sports and wildlife at 300-600mm then you could find your hit rate falling off dramatically.

Perhaps by the time the a9II comes out next year they will have fixed these issues.

 

[3kramd5]

Presumably their story is that the stacked sensor allows readouts fast enough to avoid artifacts from full electric shutter.

 

[Woody]

Very very impressive specs!

PS: Hopefully the A9 does not go down the same path as the Minolta 7D, another camera with high specification (at that point of release), innovative feature set and a very high price tag... before Konica-Minolta exited the camera business and was subsequently acquired by Sony.

 

[Dylan777]

From off to on ready to shoot needs to be fast for sport cam. Current a7 is not that great. Hope a9 has solved that problem. Fuji xt2 is as fast as dslr.

 

[weixing]

Hi,
Good for Sony user.

Also, Sony not using XQD card on their high speed sports camera?? Hmm... did Sony give up on XQD card??

Have a nice day.

 

[rwvaughn]

Not interested in the least...

1). The mount is too small and too weak to support long lenses/large glass. A number of cases of failed lens mounts support this.
2). The body is too small for large sports lenses.
3). Lack of sufficient native lenses.
4). Poor professional support and product service.

 

[3kramd5]

^^

I'm not interested in buying; my 1Dx is more appealing to me. Technologically it's very interesting.

But what are you doing, holding your long lenses from the body? Hold the lens. The body and mount are just fine.

 

[H. Jones]

^^

I'm not interested in buying; my 1Dx is more appealing to me. Technologically it's very interesting.

But what are you doing, holding your long lenses from the body? Hold the lens. The body and mount are just fine.

I own both a 5D3 and a 1DX mark II and have used supertelephotos as well as my 100-400IS II with both, I vastly prefer the 1DX mark II for either. Being able to balance the weight of the 100-400 between two arms vastly improves the handling, but having the taller grip really helps spread your grip out when maneuvering these lenses.

Obviously with a supertelephoto you would break your wrists if you held them by just the body, but even at the extreme of that, it's far more comfortable using them with a bigger body; you want all the support you can get with those things.


--

On another note: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbMBgpktaJs

In this video, the battery is at 48% at 3:25 and goes to 42% by 20:20 while just browsing through the menus. That would work out to about, 5 hours of power on a single battery. Obviously it will probably depend on the uses, but as I said before, using a 120 refresh 3.6 megapixel viewfinder is going to be a drain on a battery, nevertheless moving 20 FPS of 24mp data. Sony also stated the viewfinder is brighter than any other camera, and I can't imagine that doesn't increase the battery draw.

 

[Hflm]

Presumably their story is that the stacked sensor allows readouts fast enough to avoid artifacts from full electric shutter.

It better should. MY present A7rii is hardly usable in churches during weddings because of banding.

 

[9VIII]

If I had all the money in the world I would definitely get one of these, it sounds like a lot of fun regardless of what inherent downsides it may have (which probably aren't many).

The biggest question in my mind is still about the ecosystem as a whole, do all the advertised features actually work? Does it suffer any build quality problems?
Why on earth does it still only have one UHS-II slot? Is everyone just supposed to buy two cameras if they want redundant video recording?

I'm betting there's a 90% chance that Full Frame is still not the best way to shoot 4K on the A9.

 

[Woody]

Why on earth does it still only have one UHS-II slot? Is everyone just supposed to buy two cameras if they want redundant video recording?

From http://www.sansmirror.com/newsviews/sony-goes-further-upscale.html

"Sony set a new record today in their announcement of the new A9 mirrorless camera. Oh, not the shutter speed, frame rate, or other stuff you might be thinking of; the record they set is in the number of footnotes needed in the first 88 words: 9 (actually 10, since they later footnote something that appeared in those first 88 words)...

... while the buffer and frame per second calculations are correct for one card slot, the second card slot is not UHS-II. Why camera makers think this is a good thing to have differing slots when they are constantly performing integrity checks on the disk tables on cards, I don’t know. Basically you’re always limited by the slowest card in the camera. So shooting to both cards at the extremes of what the camera is designed to do is likely to have some downgrading effect, probably mostly on buffer...

So despite all the buzz from Sony that the A9 is a sports-shooter camera, we need to verify that it really does have the necessary focus performance, and Sony needs more lenses for that market ASAP.

I find plenty that’s very appealing in the A9 specs. But I have to wonder from all the footnotes and all the still small-and-hard-to-find buttons whether Sony has fully dialed in a DSLR-killer yet. Testing will tell. Until then, we can all just drool over the plethora of interesting spec points."

 

[serenaur]

I am not going to sell my gear for this, but maybe Canon is not targeting me. I am middle aged, so maybe Sony is targeting the newer, younger pros who have not got so much gear. If I were younger and starting out or in my 20s or even 30s I would definitely be looking at this and the glass available.

As a 30 year old who's had an A7Sii and Metabones adapter with Canon glass (for my job) for well over a year now - I just bought a 1DXii. Literally placed the order yesterday. This rumoured Sony was sort of on my radar but the 1DXii is everything I need in one package and I'm confident it will be my main camera for years to come.

Using the A7Sii has left me cold since I got it. I mainly use it for video and while some of the features are really amazing (high ISO performance, file sizes vs quality etc), there are just too many problems with it in the field in day to day use in my personal experience. Trotting out the old colour science complaint would be easy but other things such as the diabolical battery life, the menu system being a chore to use, having to use adapters (which is a pain in itself) for my lenses, terrible "working" photo performance (likely down to adapter use) etc just mean that I find it very difficult to get excited about this A9 or Sony stuff in general at the moment. I very much welcome this challenge to the camera marketplace though as competition is good for every brand to keep innovating.

As someone mentioned previously, if you can't take a good photo with any of the existing cameras in this price range then an A9 isn't going to magically improve your photography. In my personal situation this camera would be too much of a compromise out in the field and that is a huge factor in my purchasing decisions.

 

[JohanCruyff]

"Canon is doomed".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Various_authors

 

[expatinasia]

As a 30 year old who's had an A7Sii and Metabones adapter with Canon glass (for my job) for well over a year now - I just bought a 1DXii. Literally placed the order yesterday. This rumoured Sony was sort of on my radar but the 1DXii is everything I need in one package and I'm confident it will be my main camera for years to come.

You won't be disappointed. My 1DX Mark I is still going strong and I have put it through hell and back on quite a few occasions! Plus there are so many advantages to being with Canon that it's not just about the camera or glass that's available, although granted they are the primary reasons.

 

[3kramd5]

Presumably their story is that the stacked sensor allows readouts fast enough to avoid artifacts from full electric shutter.

It better should. MY present A7rii is hardly usable in churches during weddings because of banding.

I'll have to check that out. Other than one time to hear if it's really silent, I've never used it due to one of sony's design choices to drop precision by a bit in that mode.