a1 II: the camera that the original a1 should have been

[Hotel Lonely]

a1 II is undoubtably a camera of debates. For those who owned the original a1, it seemed like an overpriced minor upgrade. For many others, it looked like the camera that the original a1 should have been.

- My Journey Before...

I grew up shooting film and analogue stuff, I started my Sony GAS journey quite late in the game. I owned a couple other Sony recent cameras, from a7R IV, then a7S III, then a7R V, eventually landed on the a1 II.

I didn't buy the original a1 because I was very interested in the Prores Raw output of a7S III. It was the most true-to-truth video raw at that time. As an engineering nerd who works in the imaging industry that was a hard to ignore selling point, no matter how clumsy it might be when you're actually using it . Though the a1 can also output prores raw, that was a internally downsampled result, so "not so raw".

When I bought my a7R V, it felt like the perfect camera for photography. It has the best screen mechanism, it has the best EVF, it has 2 CFEX-A card slots and its super responsive compared to my old a7R IV. The AI subject detection is a god send and the only thing that can do it better is the EOS R1 and R5 II, which are both great cameras, just not to my liking.

I mostly shoot stills of people and landscapes, but I'm also heavily invested in sports, wildlife and planes. So the onlything I felt that I'm lacking at that time, was a camera with better AF during bursts. Due to the physical limitation of mechanical shutter, the a7R V does a poor job when doing highspeed bursts, even though it can do very well when shooting in single shot mode. But I really cannot go back to the a1 experience, after I have owned the a7R V. This camera literally raised the bar for me and since owning it I even started to refuse using the a7S III, unless absolutely in need.

- Buying Justification

For a camera at this price range, the buying choice really heavily rely on your need.

Personally, as a hybrid shooter

- I don't like Canon's rounded looking design (though, I really like its processing power, dual pixel af, and optical pointer, also a little bit better AI), and its lens fleet make me feel a bit uncomfortable.

- a1 II still has a clear edge on image quality over other comparable competitions (EOS R5 II & Z8/9).

- a1 II still has a clear edge on read out speed over other comparable competitions (EOS R5 II).

- a1 II still has a clear edge on autofocusing over Nikon's camera.

- EOS R1 and a9 III don't meet my need of high pixel count and high DR (cleaner image) preference.

- Nitpicking

- Loss of true video raw, but I'm over it now. I'm ok with heavily processed raw psychologically now...

- Noticeably worse battery life for casual shooting

- No quick switch between lossy raw and lossless raw. No auto switch either. Boost button boosts to 30fps only when you have selected lossy raw first. This is one single thing I want Sony to fix ASAP.

====================================

- Image quality

According to PTP the a1 II did noticeably better when compared to the original. I say noticeably because that many who owned the original a1 and a7R IV/V noticed the image quality difference (probably because the trained eyes), corresponding to the PTP score difference. But this time the a1 II did a very similar score with a7R IV/V.

Also, when comparing the use for landscape, a1 II provided Noise Reduction Shooting, which is essentially a quicker stacking process. It's much easier to get better image quality than traditional pixel shift. The final result would look much more closer to a long exposure under low ISO, rather than multiple shots stacking on top of each other.

For landscape stills, I would say this option alone made the a1 II the better landscape camera, when compared with a7R V. I saw a slightly better result for high ISO as well but I haven't gave a close look on its astro capability yet.

- Bird Subject Detection

It's top notch, but still bird detecion is a task that is very hard. If the bird is facing backwards it would not pick up the bird. If the bird is heavily occuluded by other things like tree branches, it would not pick up the bird. So don't just rely on that AI. You still have to do your job, find a better angle, shoot closer, buy more expensive lenses, ...etc.

However if the bird is facing the camera, and only a small, reasonable part of the bird's head is occuluded, then it's totally fine. It even works with BIF.

Other than this, I would say that the camera requires you to change your mindset when you're using pre-capture. I'm also still getting used to it but it's already making miracles.

 

[A74Me]

enjoy your new camera,its a cracker of a camera. for me the camera is just 1 part of the system, my pro portrait work requires a studio and extensive lighting equip. my extreme macro requires hand made equipment that you cant buy. for myself the A12 is not on my radar, it would not improve the shooting workflow i have atm i shoot streaming live to a field monitor, 10+ frames 1/40sec shutter, continous lighting. my only requirement i needed is 5micron pixels, instant buffer clear times after shooting a 400 image stack which the a7iv is capable of and the lowest noise levels possable at base iso for clean stacks.

 

[AlephNull]

The A1 came out 4 years ago. It came out before the "AI chip" was developed. It came out before Sony had developed everything you wanted. So there was no way you could have had the A1 II back then. So no, this not what "the original A1 should have been".

The original A1 was a fine camera for its day - first stacked sensor camera capable of shooting flash with electronic shutter, for example..

The A1 II has a lot of enhancements, no matter how much people denigrate them. I was happy to replace the original A1 with the newer version. It's a fine complement for the A9 III.

 

[RealWorldPhoto]

Many say the same about every new camera model that is released, the previous camera should have been like this one.

I am the one that don't use latest models. But then, I just use my cameras for creating stills and video content and earn for a living. I also enjoy lesure photography, but don't need the latest high end specs for this. That's me. Enjoy your camera, no matter new or "outdated".

 

[Hotel Lonely]

The A1 came out 4 years ago. It came out before the "AI chip" was developed. It came out before Sony had developed everything you wanted. So there was no way you could have had the A1 II back then. So no, this not what "the original A1 should have been".

The original A1 was a fine camera for its day - first stacked sensor camera capable of shooting flash with electronic shutter, for example..

The A1 II has a lot of enhancements, no matter how much people denigrate them. I was happy to replace the original A1 with the newer version. It's a fine complement for the A9 III.

Right, but I think Sony pushed it out too early for the market. If Sony waited for around the same time for releasing both a7R V and "a1 II" (but as a1), the market response would be more positive I think.

For the original a1:

- competitors like Nikon soon pushed out an aliexpress a1, the ZZ 9, and the temu a1 which is the ZZ8. Both are significantly cheaper than the a1, and their video capabilities are very hard to ignore for some users. Also Nikon's lens fleet do very well on super telephotos.

- EOS R5 was quite competitive as well.

- CFEX A cards were really expensive back then. And it was rendered as an inferior choice for cards by many (and honestly, yes it was, at that time).

- No firmware upgrade for a very long time

- No flip screen (which has been criticised since the launch day)

The a1 outdone its competitors on photography for sure, but not by far.

Now fast forward to a1 II:

- price of CF Express Type A cards become much more reasonable. People have started to realize the benefits of Type A cards now instead of just complaining about its price.

- AI subject detection enhanced the AF experience by a huge margin, beating Nikon by a large margin and is comparable with Canon. There's no sign of Nikon being able to catch up soon.

- the overpriced ZZ and R lenses made the FE system much more competitive.

- the blind heat for 8k raw video footage has cooled down (probably due to the downturn of global economy? not sure)

- firmware update strategy seem to have changed in a positive way

...

Regardless, the a1 II was a huge success that even Sony itself didn't expect. But for me it's completely reasonable because it's really a camera that for the first time, you can't find a major flaw that really bothers you. It's the first camera that can do everything for a hybrid shooter pretty pretty good without much of hassle. I think the only other camera that I can think of that is roughly comparable, is the EOS R5 II.

 

[Foxjet]

Excellent summation of this outstanding camera.

 

[Interceptor121]

1. Thanks for the review. To be fair when you look at the difference most of them Sony could have addressed at the time as they are functionality not technology drive

Marc Galer has produce this list of 10 items that in his view are improvements

I assessed my upgrade case based on the improvement underwater as that is the category which is driving most of my cost due to housing and ports



The camera does not recognise fish and I am good with it already does right now so the improved subject recognition is not a driver for me. If you believe this is hardware limited this feature could have not been implemented at the time.

The other ones actually could have. Panasonic and Olympus have had precapture for years and I have a camera that does it today at 60/70 fps fixed focus that for me is more interesting than continous. This feature for some shooters is a deal breaker. Sony could have implemented it in the first A1 but did not.

Improved steadyshot: I am waiting for optyczne to test, the A1 has a real life score of 3 stops and the A9III of 3 1/2 Ev for me this is not a main issue

Video stabilisation which is not covered by CIPA rating it is and here looking at Richard Wong test the performance is way behind what Panasonic is offering.

Screen resolution is not a main issue but articulating is convenient

So in short the new camera has lots of feature that should be today in the A1 but are not and some that cannot be. If those are critical then it is a nice use case but yet the A1 costs now £1,000 less. Are those features worth £1,000? It depends who you are

For the image quality P2P data for the A1 is incorrect. I use the nefutil procedure and I have provided data for at least 6 cameras till now. When I tested the Panasonic S1RII I run tests myself and to make sure I was using the program correctly I tested both my two A1 and got consistent and differnet values.



On average the A1M2 is 0.07 Ev better than the A1 using my A1 data and Bill A1M2. The procedure is user dependent and I am not sure what happened to whoever provided the A1 data or even the manufacturing process may have improved till then

The difference at ISO 100 is 0.11 at ISO 640 0.13 and the highest delta is at ISO 16000 0.3 EV probably due to stronger noise reduction

Those differences are impossible to appreciate by the eye. I have not investigated if the exposure bias has changed between the two models. Generally any difference below 0.5 Ev is not easily noticable. If you think you see a benefit this is most likely placebo.

I have two A1 I will wait until further tests confirm the stabilisation part and the video autofocus before I reconsider but for now I am holding back as the underwater housing is £4000 and the new camera is not compatible with what I have

With regards to stacking photos the camera does not do it you need to do it later therefore this is really not a benefit more than you taking the same number of shots in burst except you will take exactly the number of shots you set

Again easily implemntable on any camera. considering that shutter speed cannot be lower than 1/30 why don't you just take a 1" image and lower your ISO 5 stops? If you are base ISO you won't get benefits if you are at high and you blend you may as well just take a long exposure???

finally the A1 do pixel binning which improves dr but can generate moire it is not skipping lines and in many scenarios you don’t see the artefacts

prores raw reads the sensor though in binned mode the a7s has aliasing filter it wont have moire

--
If you like my image I would appreciate if you follow me on social media
instagram http://instagram.com/interceptor121
My flickr sets http://www.flickr.com/photos/interceptor121/
Youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/interceptor121
Underwater Photo and Video Blog http://interceptor121.com
If you want to get in touch don't send me a PM rather contact me directly at my website/social media

 

[A74Me]

The A1 came out 4 years ago. It came out before the "AI chip" was developed. It came out before Sony had developed everything you wanted. So there was no way you could have had the A1 II back then. So no, this not what "the original A1 should have been".

The original A1 was a fine camera for its day - first stacked sensor camera capable of shooting flash with electronic shutter, for example..

The A1 II has a lot of enhancements, no matter how much people denigrate them. I was happy to replace the original A1 with the newer version. It's a fine complement for the A9 III.

the olympus em52 was the first camera to fire flash in electronic shutter mode. the em12 was the next way before sony.

 

[LarryRC]

a1 II is undoubtably a camera of debates. For those who owned the original a1, it seemed like an overpriced minor upgrade. For many others, it looked like the camera that the original a1 should have been.

- My Journey Before...

I grew up shooting film and analogue stuff, I started my Sony GAS journey quite late in the game. I owned a couple other Sony recent cameras, from a7R IV, then a7S III, then a7R V, eventually landed on the a1 II.

I didn't buy the original a1 because I was very interested in the Prores Raw output of a7S III. It was the most true-to-truth video raw at that time. As an engineering nerd who works in the imaging industry that was a hard to ignore selling point, no matter how clumsy it might be when you're actually using it . Though the a1 can also output prores raw, that was a internally downsampled result, so "not so raw".

When I bought my a7R V, it felt like the perfect camera for photography. It has the best screen mechanism, it has the best EVF, it has 2 CFEX-A card slots and its super responsive compared to my old a7R IV. The AI subject detection is a god send and the only thing that can do it better is the EOS R1 and R5 II, which are both great cameras, just not to my liking.

I mostly shoot stills of people and landscapes, but I'm also heavily invested in sports, wildlife and planes. So the onlything I felt that I'm lacking at that time, was a camera with better AF during bursts. Due to the physical limitation of mechanical shutter, the a7R V does a poor job when doing highspeed bursts, even though it can do very well when shooting in single shot mode. But I really cannot go back to the a1 experience, after I have owned the a7R V. This camera literally raised the bar for me and since owning it I even started to refuse using the a7S III, unless absolutely in need.

- Buying Justification

For a camera at this price range, the buying choice really heavily rely on your need.

Personally, as a hybrid shooter

- I don't like Canon's rounded looking design (though, I really like its processing power, dual pixel af, and optical pointer, also a little bit better AI), and its lens fleet make me feel a bit uncomfortable.

- a1 II still has a clear edge on image quality over other comparable competitions (EOS R5 II & Z8/9).

- a1 II still has a clear edge on read out speed over other comparable competitions (EOS R5 II).

- a1 II still has a clear edge on autofocusing over Nikon's camera.

- EOS R1 and a9 III don't meet my need of high pixel count and high DR (cleaner image) preference.

- Nitpicking

- Loss of true video raw, but I'm over it now. I'm ok with heavily processed raw psychologically now...

- Noticeably worse battery life for casual shooting

- No quick switch between lossy raw and lossless raw. No auto switch either. Boost button boosts to 30fps only when you have selected lossy raw first. This is one single thing I want Sony to fix ASAP.

====================================

- Image quality

According to PTP the a1 II did noticeably better when compared to the original. I say noticeably because that many who owned the original a1 and a7R IV/V noticed the image quality difference (probably because the trained eyes), corresponding to the PTP score difference. But this time the a1 II did a very similar score with a7R IV/V.

Thanks for taking the time to do this review, very helpful. I’m confused as to how you are relating image quality to a small DR increase? Or are you saying that the A1 Ii images are almost as detailed as the A7RV? I am using an A7RV and have an A1 II on order. Thanks.

Also, when comparing the use for landscape, a1 II provided Noise Reduction Shooting, which is essentially a quicker stacking process. It's much easier to get better image quality than traditional pixel shift. The final result would look much more closer to a long exposure under low ISO, rather than multiple shots stacking on top of each other.

For landscape stills, I would say this option alone made the a1 II the better landscape camera, when compared with a7R V. I saw a slightly better result for high ISO as well but I haven't gave a close look on its astro capability yet.

- Bird Subject Detection

It's top notch, but still bird detecion is a task that is very hard. If the bird is facing backwards it would not pick up the bird. If the bird is heavily occuluded by other things like tree branches, it would not pick up the bird. So don't just rely on that AI. You still have to do your job, find a better angle, shoot closer, buy more expensive lenses, ...etc.

However if the bird is facing the camera, and only a small, reasonable part of the bird's head is occuluded, then it's totally fine. It even works with BIF.

Other than this, I would say that the camera requires you to change your mindset when you're using pre-capture. I'm also still getting used to it but it's already making miracles.

 

[Interceptor121]

a1 II is undoubtably a camera of debates. For those who owned the original a1, it seemed like an overpriced minor upgrade. For many others, it looked like the camera that the original a1 should have been.

- My Journey Before...

I grew up shooting film and analogue stuff, I started my Sony GAS journey quite late in the game. I owned a couple other Sony recent cameras, from a7R IV, then a7S III, then a7R V, eventually landed on the a1 II.

I didn't buy the original a1 because I was very interested in the Prores Raw output of a7S III. It was the most true-to-truth video raw at that time. As an engineering nerd who works in the imaging industry that was a hard to ignore selling point, no matter how clumsy it might be when you're actually using it . Though the a1 can also output prores raw, that was a internally downsampled result, so "not so raw".

When I bought my a7R V, it felt like the perfect camera for photography. It has the best screen mechanism, it has the best EVF, it has 2 CFEX-A card slots and its super responsive compared to my old a7R IV. The AI subject detection is a god send and the only thing that can do it better is the EOS R1 and R5 II, which are both great cameras, just not to my liking.

I mostly shoot stills of people and landscapes, but I'm also heavily invested in sports, wildlife and planes. So the onlything I felt that I'm lacking at that time, was a camera with better AF during bursts. Due to the physical limitation of mechanical shutter, the a7R V does a poor job when doing highspeed bursts, even though it can do very well when shooting in single shot mode. But I really cannot go back to the a1 experience, after I have owned the a7R V. This camera literally raised the bar for me and since owning it I even started to refuse using the a7S III, unless absolutely in need.

- Buying Justification

For a camera at this price range, the buying choice really heavily rely on your need.

Personally, as a hybrid shooter

- I don't like Canon's rounded looking design (though, I really like its processing power, dual pixel af, and optical pointer, also a little bit better AI), and its lens fleet make me feel a bit uncomfortable.

- a1 II still has a clear edge on image quality over other comparable competitions (EOS R5 II & Z8/9).

- a1 II still has a clear edge on read out speed over other comparable competitions (EOS R5 II).

- a1 II still has a clear edge on autofocusing over Nikon's camera.

- EOS R1 and a9 III don't meet my need of high pixel count and high DR (cleaner image) preference.

- Nitpicking

- Loss of true video raw, but I'm over it now. I'm ok with heavily processed raw psychologically now...

- Noticeably worse battery life for casual shooting

- No quick switch between lossy raw and lossless raw. No auto switch either. Boost button boosts to 30fps only when you have selected lossy raw first. This is one single thing I want Sony to fix ASAP.

====================================

- Image quality

According to PTP the a1 II did noticeably better when compared to the original. I say noticeably because that many who owned the original a1 and a7R IV/V noticed the image quality difference (probably because the trained eyes), corresponding to the PTP score difference. But this time the a1 II did a very similar score with a7R IV/V.

Thanks for taking the time to do this review, very helpful. I’m confused as to how you are relating image quality to a small DR increase? Or are you saying that the A1 Ii images are almost as detailed as the A7RV? I am using an A7RV and have an A1 II on order. Thanks.

he has been mislead by the dataset on p2p that is not accurate see my post

with a good lens you will see a small improvement

of resolution in the order of 10-15%

Also, when comparing the use for landscape, a1 II provided Noise Reduction Shooting, which is essentially a quicker stacking process. It's much easier to get better image quality than traditional pixel shift. The final result would look much more closer to a long exposure under low ISO, rather than multiple shots stacking on top of each other.

For landscape stills, I would say this option alone made the a1 II the better landscape camera, when compared with a7R V. I saw a slightly better result for high ISO as well but I haven't gave a close look on its astro capability yet.

- Bird Subject Detection

It's top notch, but still bird detecion is a task that is very hard. If the bird is facing backwards it would not pick up the bird. If the bird is heavily occuluded by other things like tree branches, it would not pick up the bird. So don't just rely on that AI. You still have to do your job, find a better angle, shoot closer, buy more expensive lenses, ...etc.

However if the bird is facing the camera, and only a small, reasonable part of the bird's head is occuluded, then it's totally fine. It even works with BIF.

Other than this, I would say that the camera requires you to change your mindset when you're using pre-capture. I'm also still getting used to it but it's already making miracles.