Sony A9 II is here!

The Sony A9: A Camera that Stands Out from the Rest, but Lacks Certain Features that Professionals Deserve

I have had the pleasure of shooting with the Sony A9, and I can confidently say that it is an incredible camera. With its advanced features such as a 24.2-megapixel full-frame sensor, fast autofocus system, and impressive burst mode capabilities, it's no wonder why this camera has been popular among professionals and enthusiasts alike. However, despite its many strengths, there are still some features that I wish Sony would consider adding to future models.

One of the things that I've noticed is that the A9 lacks certain picture profiles that are commonly found in other cameras, particularly those designed for filmmaking. Specifically, it's missing S-Log 2 and S-Log 3, as well as an HLG (Hybrid Log-Gamma) profile. As a videographer, I can attest to the importance of these profiles, which allow for greater flexibility and control over the camera's image processing. It's surprising that Sony has not included these features in the A9, especially given its high-end design and feature set.

Another issue that I have with the A9 is the memory card slot situation. While it does offer two UHS-II SD card slots, which provides a faster write speed than traditional SD cards, I still wish they would consider using more advanced media like XQD or CFexpress cards. These newer cards offer even faster write speeds and are becoming increasingly popular in high-end camera systems.

Finally, there's the matter of the viewfinder. The A9 uses the same electronic viewfinder (EVF) as its predecessor, which is a decent option but not quite top-of-the-line. Sony actually released a more advanced EVF this year with the A7R IV, which I've had the chance to try out and it's amazing. It would have been nice to see them roll out this feature in the A9 instead, but I suppose that's just not the case.

Despite these limitations, I still think the Sony A9 is an incredible camera that offers a lot of value for professionals who need high-end features without breaking the bank. The fact that it's priced lower than flagship DSLRs like the Canon EOS 5D series makes it a compelling option for those who want to upgrade from their current cameras.

In terms of pricing, the A9 will set you back around $4,500 USD or $5,900 CAD, which is certainly not cheap. However, I believe that this price point is justified given the camera's feature set and performance. If you're a professional photographer who needs a high-end camera system, the A9 may be worth considering, especially if you can find it at a lower price than its original launch price.

Overall, the Sony A9 is a remarkable camera that offers a lot of value for those who need high-end features without breaking the bank. While there are certainly some limitations to this camera, I believe that they're outweighed by its many strengths. If you're in the market for a new camera system, the A9 definitely worth considering.

I'd love to hear from readers about their experiences with the Sony A9. Do you have any favorite features or aspects of the camera? Are there any limitations that you wish Sony would address in future models? Let me know in the comments below!

As we continue to explore the capabilities and limitations of the Sony A9, I'm curious to hear from you about your own experiences with this camera system. Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting out, I hope that this article has provided some valuable insights and information to help you make an informed decision about whether or not the A9 is right for you.

The Future of Camera Technology: What's Next for Sony?

In the world of camera technology, there are always new innovations and advancements on the horizon. Whether it's improved sensor designs, faster processors, or more advanced features like 8K resolution, there's always something new to look forward to. As we continue to push the boundaries of what's possible with camera systems, I'm excited to see where Sony will go next.

One area that I think holds a lot of promise is the use of emerging media formats like XQD and CFexpress cards. These newer cards offer faster write speeds and more advanced features than traditional SD cards, and I believe that they'll play an increasingly important role in high-end camera systems going forward.

Another area where I see Sony making progress is in the development of more advanced image processing algorithms. As cameras become more capable of capturing high-quality images, it's becoming increasingly important to have software that can process and enhance those images. I've had the chance to try out some of Sony's latest image processing tools, and I'm impressed by their capabilities.

Of course, there are also always going to be new technologies emerging on the horizon. Whether it's improved sensor designs or more advanced features like artificial intelligence-powered autofocus, there's always something new to look forward to. As a photographer, I can attest to the importance of staying up-to-date with the latest developments in camera technology.

Overall, I'm excited about the future of camera technology and where Sony will go next. With its commitment to innovation and excellence, I have no doubt that this company will continue to push the boundaries of what's possible with camera systems.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enbig news today sony has officially announced the successor to the a9 we now have the a9 2 and the a9 is a very unique camera as it is it was Sony's first big flagship camera built around this concept of a stacked CMOS sensor and so with a stack CMOS sensor you have a memory layer in there and it's able to manage the amount of a full day to readout off of a full frame camera in real time and do some pretty amazing things with that and obviously that camera is targeted towards sports users which brings us to the a 9-2 with two years of feedback from pros and still photographers they've taken all of this and made some pretty big improvements and that's what I want to talk about in this video today like va9 the a9 2 features a 24 megapixel stack CMOS sensor which allows you to get up to 20 frames a second continuous shooting that is not only blackout free but it's also completely silent and this was groundbreaking with the a9 because this is something you cannot achieve with a DSLR it's only something you could do with a mirrorless camera because of the physical limitations of the mirror being in the way so not only do you have faster frame rates in terms of continuous shooting but you also have black out free shooting experience that is completely silent well we had that on the a9 but the a9 2 introduces a new upgraded by ons X processor which is there to address some critical issues in terms of focusing speed acquisition and also EDF performance now the way that the a9 and now the a9 to achieve this is by using an electronic shutter when you're up at a high-speed continuous framerate now if you're using the mechanical shutter the a9 the original one capped out at around 5 frames a second the a9 2 now has that enabled up to 10 frames a second so you get a little more power out of using a traditional mechanical shutter now the most interesting thing about all this to me is actually the speed at which calculations inside the camera maids so auto focus and auto exposure are recalculated 60 times per second so this camera is actually adjusting things faster than it can shoot and what's interesting about this to me and I think this is actually the most beneficial is I don't shoot a lot of sports I don't always need a high-speed continuous framerate so when you're just standard shooting and you're shooting one frame at a time let's say you can pretty much be assured that the focus accuracy and the exposure accuracy in this camera are better than anything else you're going to find and I think that's one of the things that make Sony ver YOUnique right now the upgraded by ons X processor allows for a new advanced autofocus tracking algorithm that addresses issues with inconsistencies in speed that you might have in subjects in a frame let's say you're shooting sports or wildlife so if you have something that's moving erratically or if you have something that accelerates or D accelerates at random intervals it basically means the cameras going to keep up with it a lot better than it did before there are 693 face detection autofocus points that cover pretty much the entire frame and we also have all of the autofocus modes that Sony have been introducing this last year including its object tracking mode you have iaf not only in stills but also in movie modes we have animal iaf as well as animal object tracking it's pretty unbelievable what you can do with autofocus this really is the best that's out there so this is the point in the video where I really wish Sony had supplied us with assets because there have been some design changes to the ergonomics of the physical design I'd love to be able to show them to you I believe they are in line with what we saw this year on the a7r 4 and if that's the case I can attest to it they were nice changes all it says in my notes are upgraded grip and buttons upgraded dust and moisture resistance USB c-terminal dual slot UHS 2 and then you also have the digital audio interface if you want to use the fancy new mic that they introduced along with the a7 r4 that's one area that I think there could have been a nice change on if Sony had chosen to move to xqd or some card that would be a little bit faster but at least we're using high performance SD cards at this point but the small complaint kind of wish they would move in that direction but we haven't seen it yet but I think the biggest feature improvements are improvements that are going to make professional photographers who work for media outlets news agency sports organizations people who deal with file transfer very very happy we now have a 5 gigahertz Wi-Fi connection speed the long terminal that you saw on the a9 it's the Ethernet port that's on the side that was a hundred base T we now have a 1,000 base T LAN terminal for high-speed transfer with versatile FTP transfer options so for people who work with FTP servers this is really interesting because now you can store up to 9 in memory and I think you can even store more to the card so if you you're not fumbling around usernames and passwords when you're doing stuff like that my favorite feature on this is you can actually start file transfer while you're shooting so let's say you're shooting a sporting event or a major news media coverage event and you need to be able to get stuff to an editor who's going to publish them on a website pretty much immediately you can start your file transfer so as you're shooting it starts uploading in the background and so you're not dealing with a bunch of cards and trying to cram everything up at the last minute which is really cool another really neat feature that I really am excited to try this out but off of SD cards you can actually transfer files with the camera powered off so let's say you're on a shoot you can put your camera in your backpack in any of your video or still image files you can just start transferring wirelessly not real sure how that works with the camera powered off but that is a very cool feature to have the a9 - also has upgraded 5 axis image stabilization which in Sony's words say that it gives you a five point five steps shutter speed advantage for full-frame images and this is something that I'm actually really interested in being able to actually use a camera to see I think that Sony have had well they have had in body image stabilization for a while now is it industry-leading know I think Panasonic and Olympus have figured that out of course especially in Olympus this case they're dealing with a much smaller sensor but even in full-frame panasonic I think it's better than what Sony have going on and that's not to totally insult Sony I think when the a 73 came out it was much improved but it still requires a steady hand to be able to finagle it into what you want it to look like where this Panasonic and Olympus have something that's almost gimbal like in its smoothness and it makes handhold shooting for not only stills but particularly video really interesting and so this is a feature I really want to see when I have a chance to use the camera which goes gonna bring me to a few downsides to the a9 of things that I wish it had that it doesn't first of all if you were a video shooter you probably already know that the original a 9 did not have the picture profiles for things like s log or hlg things that are pretty much included on every Sony camera and unfortunately with the a 92 that is still the case and it's kind of dragged because as somebody who does shoot video I have shot with the a9 and it's great I would just love to have access to s log 2 or s log 3 or even an HL G profile and they aren't there and I'm really curious as to why I'm sure there's a technical reason because this is literally the only camera in Sony's lineup that doesn't have picture profiles that are catered towards filmmaking if you look at the rx100 7 which came out a few months ago in many ways a lot of the things that we're seeing in the a9 that even with the viewfinder and the speed and the performance are always echoed in the rx100 lineup and we saw that with the RX 106 later on with the a 9 the arts 107 and now the a 9 - the arts 100 is a tiny sensor it is not Felipe's thought of the RX 100 line is being kind of the proof of concept where Sony can get that together that's always released first and then you see a lot of those things brought to the full-frame sensor in the more expensive flagship model and we still don't have those picture profiles and if I had to guess I would say it has something to do with the way the processor is managing things using the stack dual CMOS sensor because you have so much data readout that maybe it's just up against the wall in terms of what it can handle and it doesn't want to get into doing picture profiles I don't know that for sure I'm guessing there has to be a reason because this is literally the only camera that Sony does not include this on and as I said before and I don't think that Sony will address this any time in the near future but I really would love to see them explore other possibilities for media cards I think the SD cards are fine but you get a much faster write speed with something like xqd we are stuck with SD but at least they're not still trying to support memory stick and we do have two card slots and they are both UHS two SD cards and so it will support a higher speed transfer but I think at some point you have to jump into the future with what's going on there and then there's the issue with the viewfinder so the a9 - uses the same EVF that is found in the original a9 which is not a complaint because it's a decent viewfinder but sony ruled out this amazing like top-of-the-line viewfinder this year with the a7 r4 and why we don't see that in the a9 I don't know and it's possibly explained that we have just pushed the technology to the absolute limit and what we've seen Sony eke out of these cameras is just amazing until we get a next gen of processors or maybe even sensors or what they're able to do with the dual CMOS design I don't know maybe that's why the picture profiles aren't there maybe that's why the EVF isn't there I know there's a lot of technology that goes behind giving you a blackout free shooting experience and maybe it's limited a certain resolution but it would have been nice to see them roll out the viewfinder that we saw this year in the a7 r4 but I do think the sony a 9 to represents a bit of a win-win because if you're a professional photographer and what the a 9 to feature set provides you is going to be useful and I think it is extremely useful I think that it's a really incredible deal because there is no other camera on the market like this flagship DSLRs are more expensive than the Sony a9 2 in fact if you want pricing information I do have it us is going to be four thousand five hundred dollars and five thousand nine hundred ninety nine Canadian yeah it's not cheap but here's where the win-win comes in because if you don't need that full feature set I can attest the original a nine is an incredible camera I've shot a lot on that over the last two years I've been able to shoot sports with it even and use it with some incredible lenses like the four hundred millimeter F 2.8 G master or the 600 millimeter G master it's amazing and that camera has come down considerably in price I don't know if it'll stay there or not but if you look at what Sony have done historically with a few exceptions they generally don't discontinue camera models they're always available and so this gives you an incredible camera with the original a9 a slightly lower price point now so where I want to hear from you is this something that you would consider investing in let me know in the comments I'll see you guys in the next video until then laterbig news today sony has officially announced the successor to the a9 we now have the a9 2 and the a9 is a very unique camera as it is it was Sony's first big flagship camera built around this concept of a stacked CMOS sensor and so with a stack CMOS sensor you have a memory layer in there and it's able to manage the amount of a full day to readout off of a full frame camera in real time and do some pretty amazing things with that and obviously that camera is targeted towards sports users which brings us to the a 9-2 with two years of feedback from pros and still photographers they've taken all of this and made some pretty big improvements and that's what I want to talk about in this video today like va9 the a9 2 features a 24 megapixel stack CMOS sensor which allows you to get up to 20 frames a second continuous shooting that is not only blackout free but it's also completely silent and this was groundbreaking with the a9 because this is something you cannot achieve with a DSLR it's only something you could do with a mirrorless camera because of the physical limitations of the mirror being in the way so not only do you have faster frame rates in terms of continuous shooting but you also have black out free shooting experience that is completely silent well we had that on the a9 but the a9 2 introduces a new upgraded by ons X processor which is there to address some critical issues in terms of focusing speed acquisition and also EDF performance now the way that the a9 and now the a9 to achieve this is by using an electronic shutter when you're up at a high-speed continuous framerate now if you're using the mechanical shutter the a9 the original one capped out at around 5 frames a second the a9 2 now has that enabled up to 10 frames a second so you get a little more power out of using a traditional mechanical shutter now the most interesting thing about all this to me is actually the speed at which calculations inside the camera maids so auto focus and auto exposure are recalculated 60 times per second so this camera is actually adjusting things faster than it can shoot and what's interesting about this to me and I think this is actually the most beneficial is I don't shoot a lot of sports I don't always need a high-speed continuous framerate so when you're just standard shooting and you're shooting one frame at a time let's say you can pretty much be assured that the focus accuracy and the exposure accuracy in this camera are better than anything else you're going to find and I think that's one of the things that make Sony ver YOUnique right now the upgraded by ons X processor allows for a new advanced autofocus tracking algorithm that addresses issues with inconsistencies in speed that you might have in subjects in a frame let's say you're shooting sports or wildlife so if you have something that's moving erratically or if you have something that accelerates or D accelerates at random intervals it basically means the cameras going to keep up with it a lot better than it did before there are 693 face detection autofocus points that cover pretty much the entire frame and we also have all of the autofocus modes that Sony have been introducing this last year including its object tracking mode you have iaf not only in stills but also in movie modes we have animal iaf as well as animal object tracking it's pretty unbelievable what you can do with autofocus this really is the best that's out there so this is the point in the video where I really wish Sony had supplied us with assets because there have been some design changes to the ergonomics of the physical design I'd love to be able to show them to you I believe they are in line with what we saw this year on the a7r 4 and if that's the case I can attest to it they were nice changes all it says in my notes are upgraded grip and buttons upgraded dust and moisture resistance USB c-terminal dual slot UHS 2 and then you also have the digital audio interface if you want to use the fancy new mic that they introduced along with the a7 r4 that's one area that I think there could have been a nice change on if Sony had chosen to move to xqd or some card that would be a little bit faster but at least we're using high performance SD cards at this point but the small complaint kind of wish they would move in that direction but we haven't seen it yet but I think the biggest feature improvements are improvements that are going to make professional photographers who work for media outlets news agency sports organizations people who deal with file transfer very very happy we now have a 5 gigahertz Wi-Fi connection speed the long terminal that you saw on the a9 it's the Ethernet port that's on the side that was a hundred base T we now have a 1,000 base T LAN terminal for high-speed transfer with versatile FTP transfer options so for people who work with FTP servers this is really interesting because now you can store up to 9 in memory and I think you can even store more to the card so if you you're not fumbling around usernames and passwords when you're doing stuff like that my favorite feature on this is you can actually start file transfer while you're shooting so let's say you're shooting a sporting event or a major news media coverage event and you need to be able to get stuff to an editor who's going to publish them on a website pretty much immediately you can start your file transfer so as you're shooting it starts uploading in the background and so you're not dealing with a bunch of cards and trying to cram everything up at the last minute which is really cool another really neat feature that I really am excited to try this out but off of SD cards you can actually transfer files with the camera powered off so let's say you're on a shoot you can put your camera in your backpack in any of your video or still image files you can just start transferring wirelessly not real sure how that works with the camera powered off but that is a very cool feature to have the a9 - also has upgraded 5 axis image stabilization which in Sony's words say that it gives you a five point five steps shutter speed advantage for full-frame images and this is something that I'm actually really interested in being able to actually use a camera to see I think that Sony have had well they have had in body image stabilization for a while now is it industry-leading know I think Panasonic and Olympus have figured that out of course especially in Olympus this case they're dealing with a much smaller sensor but even in full-frame panasonic I think it's better than what Sony have going on and that's not to totally insult Sony I think when the a 73 came out it was much improved but it still requires a steady hand to be able to finagle it into what you want it to look like where this Panasonic and Olympus have something that's almost gimbal like in its smoothness and it makes handhold shooting for not only stills but particularly video really interesting and so this is a feature I really want to see when I have a chance to use the camera which goes gonna bring me to a few downsides to the a9 of things that I wish it had that it doesn't first of all if you were a video shooter you probably already know that the original a 9 did not have the picture profiles for things like s log or hlg things that are pretty much included on every Sony camera and unfortunately with the a 92 that is still the case and it's kind of dragged because as somebody who does shoot video I have shot with the a9 and it's great I would just love to have access to s log 2 or s log 3 or even an HL G profile and they aren't there and I'm really curious as to why I'm sure there's a technical reason because this is literally the only camera in Sony's lineup that doesn't have picture profiles that are catered towards filmmaking if you look at the rx100 7 which came out a few months ago in many ways a lot of the things that we're seeing in the a9 that even with the viewfinder and the speed and the performance are always echoed in the rx100 lineup and we saw that with the RX 106 later on with the a 9 the arts 107 and now the a 9 - the arts 100 is a tiny sensor it is not Felipe's thought of the RX 100 line is being kind of the proof of concept where Sony can get that together that's always released first and then you see a lot of those things brought to the full-frame sensor in the more expensive flagship model and we still don't have those picture profiles and if I had to guess I would say it has something to do with the way the processor is managing things using the stack dual CMOS sensor because you have so much data readout that maybe it's just up against the wall in terms of what it can handle and it doesn't want to get into doing picture profiles I don't know that for sure I'm guessing there has to be a reason because this is literally the only camera that Sony does not include this on and as I said before and I don't think that Sony will address this any time in the near future but I really would love to see them explore other possibilities for media cards I think the SD cards are fine but you get a much faster write speed with something like xqd we are stuck with SD but at least they're not still trying to support memory stick and we do have two card slots and they are both UHS two SD cards and so it will support a higher speed transfer but I think at some point you have to jump into the future with what's going on there and then there's the issue with the viewfinder so the a9 - uses the same EVF that is found in the original a9 which is not a complaint because it's a decent viewfinder but sony ruled out this amazing like top-of-the-line viewfinder this year with the a7 r4 and why we don't see that in the a9 I don't know and it's possibly explained that we have just pushed the technology to the absolute limit and what we've seen Sony eke out of these cameras is just amazing until we get a next gen of processors or maybe even sensors or what they're able to do with the dual CMOS design I don't know maybe that's why the picture profiles aren't there maybe that's why the EVF isn't there I know there's a lot of technology that goes behind giving you a blackout free shooting experience and maybe it's limited a certain resolution but it would have been nice to see them roll out the viewfinder that we saw this year in the a7 r4 but I do think the sony a 9 to represents a bit of a win-win because if you're a professional photographer and what the a 9 to feature set provides you is going to be useful and I think it is extremely useful I think that it's a really incredible deal because there is no other camera on the market like this flagship DSLRs are more expensive than the Sony a9 2 in fact if you want pricing information I do have it us is going to be four thousand five hundred dollars and five thousand nine hundred ninety nine Canadian yeah it's not cheap but here's where the win-win comes in because if you don't need that full feature set I can attest the original a nine is an incredible camera I've shot a lot on that over the last two years I've been able to shoot sports with it even and use it with some incredible lenses like the four hundred millimeter F 2.8 G master or the 600 millimeter G master it's amazing and that camera has come down considerably in price I don't know if it'll stay there or not but if you look at what Sony have done historically with a few exceptions they generally don't discontinue camera models they're always available and so this gives you an incredible camera with the original a9 a slightly lower price point now so where I want to hear from you is this something that you would consider investing in let me know in the comments I'll see you guys in the next video until then later\n"