A9 review after 2 months of usage

[Jonneymendoza2]

Here is a little review/breakdown on my experience with the A9 after 2-3months of owning it.

This review is based on the following kinds of photography i have used this camera for:

• Travel/Street
  
• Portrait
  
• Landscape
  
• Sports
  

Below are the pros and cons for each type of genre i used this camera for:

Travel/Street



Pros:

• First camera to have proper silent shooting with no penalties in banding etc in all light conditions
  
• Smaller and lighter then a FF Sports DSLR.
  
• Able to upload images to your phone to share with friends and family on the go
  
• AF Wide is super reliable for street photography making "hip" shooting easier and faster(My 5d4/5d3 half teh time focuses on wrong subject)
  
• Can charge the camera with the same mobile phone charger you most likely will carry with you in your travels(Android based phones)
  

Cons:

• Changes lenses in the field can attract lots of dusts as the sensor is exposed(i suggest using zooms vs primes for travel photography)
  
• Touch screen is pointless, You cant swipe and touch the menu system etc.
  

Portrait



Pros:

• Eye AF works far better than any A7 series camera.
  
• EVF set to effects OFF means you can see almost in the dark through the evf or screen unlike OVF when shooting in a dark studio which is common if you want to fully control the lights.
  
• Better Buffer and response times when shooting and viewing images during a portrait shoot
  
• Skin tones greatly improved on the A9 compared to other A7 series cameras.
  

Cons:

• Lower resolution then Some other cameras out there(nip picking) So if you print large size prints, this could be a negative.
  
• Cant use Electronic shutter with flashes.
  

Landscape



Pros:

• The Dynamic range is as good as all the top DR FF sensor cameras out there in real world usage but where it shines is high ISO DR which is the best in its class
  
• The EVF lets you get the shot perfect in first attempt.
  
• WB shooting nightscapes are the best i have seen from any of the cameras i have tried(5d3, 5d4, A7r2)
  

Cons:

• Lower res then some of the other cameras out there who make big prints
  

Sports



Pros:

• AF as a whole is ground breaking in many areas(Tracking, speed, feature set and accuracy) Not missed a shot because of it. Its like cheating when shooting sports with this camera. Point and shoot thats it!
  
• The battery life is better then a 5d4, nevermind any of the A7 cameras. I have never ran out of a single battery despite using two on a battery grip. You could probably shoot 12-14hours on two batteries heavily.
  
• 20fps makes capturing that crucial moment easier.
  
• Buffer rate is brilliant considering it is not using XQD cards. You can shoot Usain Bolt from the start to finishing line before it runs out of buffer at 20fps.
  
• During half time/breaks you can dump all the images in your phone/tablet using wifi and send it to press pretty quickly
  
• Pro support are now in events . They are currently in US OPEN.
  

Cons:

• Anyone that shoots over 10 seconds continues will hit the buffer
  
• Ethernet/FTP sending files on the fly is more complex then using wifi and playMobile app at present.
  
• No Fast 2.8 glasses above 200 yet. Just the 100.
  

Here are some Images

iaaf-2017-pt2-74.jpg by Jon Richy, on Flickr

iaaf-2017-pt1-601.jpg by Jon Richy, on Flickr

iaaf-london-marathon-pt2-174.jpg by Jon Richy, on Flickr

IAAF-London-final-night-pt1-392.jpg by Jon Richy, on Flickr

JDR03859-Pano.jpg by Jon Richy, on Flickr

JDR04167.jpg by Jon Richy, on Flickr

JDR05839.jpg by Jon Richy, on Flickr

JDR05335.jpg by Jon Richy, on Flickr

Conclusion:

overall this camera does everything great but excels in sports/action photography.

It offers base ISO IQ that enables you to capture breathtaking landscapes and portraits and also make a perfect travel camera that is small and lighter then a 1dx2/d5 that has similar specs.

Mirrorless is the future...

 

[JimKasson]

Pretty hard to read this when you have to be your own HTML interpreter...

Jim

 

[chrisrabe]

I'm a Web developer and even I couldn't be bothered trying to read it

 

[havanna60]

You must be a nice chap, Jonney. I have watched some of your test videos on youtube, and your sports photos on flickr (

https://flic.kr/p/XdNsHN

).

• AF Wide is super reliable for street photography making "hip" shooting easier and faster(My 5d4/5d3 half teh time focuses on wrong subject)
• Changes lenses in the field can attract lots of dusts as the sensor is exposed(i suggest using zooms vs primes for travel photography)

Hmm. This is relevant then for all mirrorless cameras, not specific to the A9. In return on a mirrorless camera it is very easy to dust off the sensor with a rocket blower, since no mirror to work around.

• Touch screen is pointless, You cant swipe and touch the menu system etc.

I'd say you were not able to learn to use it. You mentioned, how you loved to use the A9 to shoot from the hip. If you learn to use your thumb to set the focus pont with a gentle tap on the tilted out screen, you could have gotten even better results.

You can double tap the screen to zoom into the exact point you want to magnify for manual focusing; quite useful for architectural photography with a TS lens, for example. There are a number of other very nice scenarios where the touch screen can be used brilliantly.

The only really missing touch function is the touch shutter, which was available in A5100 and NEX5 cameras for decades, no one understands whey Sony forgot about implementing it.

• Cant use Electronic shutter with flashes.

This is not unique to the A9, flash is typically not available with ES. By the way, why is it a real issue? 1/8000 is available with HSS on A9. Would you want 20 FPS flash photography? If you said, yes, I'd fully understand.

• Anyone that shoots over 10 seconds continues will hit the buffer

Whoah. This is about 150 - 200 images captured in 10 seconds full speed, and you say this is a problem, do you? Show me another camera with a similar feature.

• No Fast 2.8 glasses above 200 yet. Just the 100.

This is again not a problem of the A9, per se.

Here are some Images

https://flic.kr/p/XdNsHN

Very interesting collection of images, I wouldn't say I don't like them, but definitely your style is ... hmm.... special.

--
Thank you for taking the time reading. I use DPReview as my photography/videography blog. If you like it, click Like, or leave some comments.
Have fun on http://www.flickr.com/photos/99398503@N07/sets

 

[MikeRan]

Yeah. The formatting is a pain, but if you want to read it you can...

I agree the "Anyone who shoots over 10 seconds continuous will hit the buffer" is a ridiculously nit-picky criticism. Unless you were being sarcastic.

You can get 18 seconds in JPG at 20FPS..

Or you can drop to 10FPS and probably get 30 seconds of shooting in RAW. (Has anyone tested this?)

Anyway I'll assume you were being sarcastic...

 

[Abrak]

Cons:

[*]Touch screen is pointless, You cant swipe and touch the menu system etc.

Thanks for the review. I think the idea of a review after 2 months of use is a very good one...

It is a small point but I am very disappointed to read the above. Sony has no excuses for a poor implementation of a touch screen especially as they were late to the game.

First of all they are an electronics company. And secondly they should have a huge competitive advantage here because they already make smartphones. Really you would expect them to be the 'class' leader here. Touch screens are nowhere near a deal breaker between me and cameras but this really should be an area at which Sony excels.....

--
http://www.salintara.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robcoll/

 

[havanna60]

... Unless you were being sarcastic ... Anyway I'll assume you were being sarcastic...

Damn, how silly I was. The OP was making fun of us, you are totally right, The formatting, the demo pictures, the Cons comments, all. Hah. Cool. Now I understand his nasty remark about the touch screen "It's completely useless since the menu items cannot be touch-selected"

After reading it back again, I clicked Like

--
Thank you for taking the time reading. I use DPReview as my photography/videography blog. If you like it, click Like, or leave some comments.
Have fun on http://www.flickr.com/photos/99398503@N07/sets

 

[chrisrabe]

Indeed. I mean Samsung already had a brilliant implementation of touch screen on camera years ago.

Ok, they have gone bye-bye now (so glad I swapped systems when I did).

Not sure why Sony is so reluctant to offer as standard with a good implementation.

 

[aarif]

First let me say thanks you

I have it too love its AF silent shutter buffer no blackouts battery life, I can spend an hour just talking about it's AF , but there are few thing I still have problem with like skin tones when shooting indoors and low light conditions. even though I shoot RAW I just can't get the colors I want when editing them. over saturated orange skin tones that when you try to correct the other parts of the image become too cold. also AWB in low light is not very good and another small thing is metering jumps from over to under while maintaining eye focus on the same spot. But over all a fantastic tool I just wish Sony will have a firmware update for AWB and and get rid of the orange color.

did you test the RAW files with both EShutter and MShutter side by side

Thanks again

 

[Jonneymendoza2]

Hi all.

I will fix the formatting.

Dont know why DP is the only forum that cant use bbcode formatted text!

anyways to answer some of the questions here below:

mechanical vs ES

Nope not compared these two shots.

Touch screen:

Yes i am aware you can double ta to zoom but you can pinch and zoom, swipe to next or previous images or operate the menus using touch....

10 second buffer:

Its not really a negative for me, but being neutral for this review because they are some who shoot longer, D5 practically has unlimited buffer! I personally have never hit the buffer as my shooting style only lasts 4-5 seconds at the most but aain i dont want too be bias and mentioned this as a cons.

No fast glass over 200mm

who buys a sports action orientated camera without knowing what glass is there for the body? This is IMO a valid cons when using a A9.. No fast glass above 200mm.

ES using flash:

There are now flashes that can shoot way faster then 5fps which this camera can only do in mechanical mode. If somehow it could sync with ES, even up to 10fps, that would make action studio shoots great and another pro for this camera.

 

[MikeRan]

Hi all.

I will fix the formatting.

Dont know why DP is the only forum that cant use bbcode formatted text!

anyways to answer some of the questions here below:

mechanical vs ES

Nope not compared these two shots.

Touch screen:

Yes i am aware you can double ta to zoom but you can pinch and zoom, swipe to next or previous images or operate the menus using touch....

10 second buffer:

Its not really a negative for me, but being neutral for this review because they are some who shoot longer, D5 practically has unlimited buffer! I personally have never hit the buffer as my shooting style only lasts 4-5 seconds at the most but aain i dont want too be bias and mentioned this as a cons.

Haha, your comparisons in the review were to 5D3 and 5D4. 5D 4 shoots only 4 seconds at 7FPS... you can drop the Sony down to 5FPS and shoot until your card fills up. I think no one knew you suddenly were comparing the a9 to the D5 and not the 5D. I don't think the comment adds any objectivity to the review however. Anyway, I get your point, no problem.

No fast glass over 200mm

who buys a sports action orientated camera without knowing what glass is there for the body? This is IMO a valid cons when using a A9.. No fast glass above 200mm.

Perhaps valid, but this isn't JUST a sports action oriented camera. I wonder how many people won't ever put ANY long glass on their a9's...

ES using flash:

There are now flashes that can shoot way faster then 5fps which this camera can only do in mechanical mode. If somehow it could sync with ES, even up to 10fps, that would make action studio shoots great and another pro for this camera.

Sure. We still have a ways to go in technology here. ES is still rolling shutter. A damn good one, And one approaching the performance of a mechanical shutter as far as how quickly the blades move (within 2x?). Until the rolling of the rolling shutter is faster than the flash pulse, it isn't gonna work. Maybe a few years yet.