I currently own a Sony A1. I switched over from the R3 due to size mostly. I noticed the A1 has great autofocus, but the R3 was definitely better/stickier when shooting sports. I have a chance to trade someone for their new A9III, would you guys recommend this? Apart from the MP/ability to crop on the A1 is their anything that the A1 can do better than the A9III? Again I shoot mostly photo (soccer, cars).
I think the main issue is a base iso of 250 vs 100.
The other thought is have you tried changing the AF tracking settings to make it more sticky. If that doesn’t fix it, then the AI chip on the a9 should help. Might also look at the canon R5 II it sounds like the focus is pretty good on that if you are shooting the right sports.
But before jumping off the a1 I would see if you can change the configuration and explore that first. So is the issue that you get focus where you want, but then lose tracking. Or is it you focus on the wrong object instead of what you want?
I own both. I find the AF on the A9III even better than the already excellent AF on the A1.
Is it night and day? No. But definitely an improvement. The subject recognition modes like Cars and planes work very well.
And the precapture is an excellent feature. I used it for jets crossing recently and it’s almost like a cheat code.
You said you photograph cars. Not sure if that means motorsports, but the base ISO of 250 is definitely something that needs to be considered.
I photographed a race recently and I had to use a 2 stop ND for panning shots to keep my aperture in an acceptable range
The grip is also much better IMO. Overall, it is a fun camera to use. And as long as you have enough reach with your glass, produces excellent images. I haven’t noticed any major issues with reduced dynamic range or worse ISO noise
Whether it’s worth trading for? Hard to say. Only you can decide that. But I hope some of this info is useful
The new action AF on the new Canons looks very impressive. If soccer is a big part of what you photograph. A hard look at the Canons might be worthwhile
I own both the A1 and A9III. The A1 has sat in the closet since getiing the 9. Much faster and stickier autofocus. The precapture and ability to set for your needs is like cheating. Can't believe the images you capture with the 9 but normally would miss with the A1. 24 MP has not been an issue I usually shoot fast moving birds.
I'm not really familiar with how the cameras do for sports/humans as I'm only shooting birds/animals.
As already mentioned, if 24MP is suitable for your use case (much more likely for sports than birds) then I think the A9III would be the better camera for you.
I spent 3 weeks shooting the A9III on loan. I loved the faster FPS options when needed and I loved the pre-capture. Lots of other little things that improve the QOL of using the camera over the A1 (some off the top of my head were improved button feel, better grip shape, better LCD movements, DMF for all lenses).
What I didn't find (for birds) was noticeably better AF. I got more good shots but that was all down to FPS and precapture and little to do with the AF tracking that I could tell.
I actually found that there was a regression in the AF programming compared to previous Sony bodies....with all my previous Sony bodies the AF would prioritize the centre of the frame when using non-tracking Wide and Zone modes....as long as you kept the subject relatively centered in the frame, the camera ignored foreground distractions. With the A9III, unless the camera had an active Subject ID lock, it would jump the "dancing squares" to foreground grass. With A9/A9II/A1 if the camera had a bird lock in Wide (non-tracking) and then couldn't identify it anymore (say the bird turns away) the camera would continue to dance the squares over the bird if you kept it close to the centre of the frame....with the A9III it immediately would jump to foreground grass or whatever. I found this a big deal and a huge annoyance. This is probably the only thing that is worrying me about the future A1II as this behaviour was a big downgrade IMO. It may not be relevant to sports/human shooting and may be less relevant if you use the AF in the Tracking modes.
I didn't end up buying an A9III because even though I spent a better part of a decade shooting birds with 18-24MP cameras, I was really missing the 45-61MP cameras I've been shooting the past 5 years. If Sony had kept the price at A9II $4500, I may have bought one for its unique features but I though my $6K better saved and put towards the A1II.
arbitrage wrote:
I actually found that there was a regression in the AF programming compared to previous Sony bodies....with all my previous Sony bodies the AF would prioritize the centre of the frame when using non-tracking Wide and Zone modes....as long as you kept the subject relatively centered in the frame, the camera ignored foreground distractions. With the A9III, unless the camera had an active Subject ID lock, it would jump the "dancing squares" to foreground grass.
When we tested it at work, one of my coworkers nicknamed it The Young Bloodhound. Tell it what it's tracking, and it's laser focused. Let it decide, and it leaps around inspecting things randomly. That was the first production firmware, though. My hope is that's one of the things they've improved since.
Capturing fast peak action requires skill. While the AF capabilities of a body can assist to a point, it comes down to the operator and their ability to get a focal point on the target. For those who regularly shoot sports either of these bodies will work. After that is about reach. Example, shooting action at the far end of a soccer field with a 400mm requires a fair amount of cropping. Add low light and high ISO and it can get tricky. There is more one can do with 50mp vs 24mp.
I say, if the R3 didn't give you any problems so far as resolution and your display/printing sizes, then the 9III is probably going to be a good fit. If you want to split hairs, the 9III relies more on in-camera noise reduction, but it's effective noise-reduction. The output was never less than stunning in our tests. And the difference between very low rolling shutter and no rolling shutter becomes obvious when you have to pan to track fast moving subjects. Even the difference Geoff pointed out above that we also saw in our testing, assuming it's still there, is surmountable if you tell the camera what to look for. Keep it fed with great glass that covers your shooting needs and I doubt it'll do less than thrill you.
In my experience you can resolve the issue of it jumping to things by tweaking the sensitivity settings--especially the substrings in whatever AI subject recognition mode you are in. Ultimately it is more sensitive than the A1 and I get the sense that was a conscious design choice. In practical use for most of my shooting, once I got the sensitivity settings dialed in I never even thought about it any more.
It is interesting that you mentioned the issue with A9iii jumping to foreground grasses , objects when not acquiring subject lock on...my friend just bought one and complained of very same thing. He also owns an A1 for comparison. Could it be an algorithm that needs tweaking via firmware update? Time will tell
Later
arbitrage wrote:
I'm not really familiar with how the cameras do for sports/humans as I'm only shooting birds/animals.
As already mentioned, if 24MP is suitable for your use case (much more likely for sports than birds) then I think the A9III would be the better camera for you.
I spent 3 weeks shooting the A9III on loan. I loved the faster FPS options when needed and I loved the pre-capture. Lots of other little things that improve the QOL of using the camera over the A1 (some off the top of my head were improved button feel, better grip shape, better LCD movements, DMF for all lenses).
What I didn't find (for birds) was noticeably better AF. I got more good shots but that was all down to FPS and precapture and little to do with the AF tracking that I could tell.
I actually found that there was a regression in the AF programming compared to previous Sony bodies....with all my previous Sony bodies the AF would prioritize the centre of the frame when using non-tracking Wide and Zone modes....as long as you kept the subject relatively centered in the frame, the camera ignored foreground distractions. With the A9III, unless the camera had an active Subject ID lock, it would jump the "dancing squares" to foreground grass. With A9/A9II/A1 if the camera had a bird lock in Wide (non-tracking) and then couldn't identify it anymore (say the bird turns away) the camera would continue to dance the squares over the bird if you kept it close to the centre of the frame....with the A9III it immediately would jump to foreground grass or whatever. I found this a big deal and a huge annoyance. This is probably the only thing that is worrying me about the future A1II as this behaviour was a big downgrade IMO. It may not be relevant to sports/human shooting and may be less relevant if you use the AF in the Tracking modes.
I didn't end up buying an A9III because even though I spent a better part of a decade shooting birds with 18-24MP cameras, I was really missing the 45-61MP cameras I've been shooting the past 5 years. If Sony had kept the price at A9II $4500, I may have bought one for its unique features but I though my $6K better saved and put towards the A1II....Show more →
MP aside I would choose the A9iii. I own both. Note that I only use it for birds. To me it locks on faster, stays on more consistently, the added frames per second are much better as well. Pre capture is amazing. Basically cheating. I did also find that the camera tends to jump to foreground grasses as described above. I have not tried to fine tune it further to see if anything changes. But if MP are not of a concern then the A9iii is a much better camera in my opinion to capture action.
About 3 weeks ago I had a chance to try both cameras in question on a series of MLS Next games, and I was surprised how close they are. I'd say the A9 III (own) still has the edge, but the R3 (rental) is extremely close in terms of keepers. I never noticed any focus jumps on people, but maybe it's different with birds. The only thing that I don't like - the A9 III may lose focus if someone comes in front of the tracked subject, and then it takes a long time to recover. It's happening in spite of the camera being set to the "stickiest" tracking option. I missed a few good shots because of that but overall no complaints. I quit using my A1 after trying the A9 III. For fast and chaotic sports the difference is huge thanks to the advanced human body recognition. Of course I'd love the A9 III to have a little more megapixels for better reach (by cropping), but heat haze kills sharpness regardless of resolution, so it's not a huge loss.
One thing that I noticed - the R3 drains its large battery faster than the A9III. Not a big problem since I got spares, but still a surprise. I could shoot two games on the A9 III and still have around 10% left, while the R3 was running out of juice at about 3/4 of the second game.
Supposedly the newly announced Canon bodies should have more advanced (and sports oriented) AF than the R3, and my guess these bodies will tip the scale again (yes, this story never ends ).
The A1 AF has a few weaknesses:
1) if the background is busy, it tends to focus on it rather than on the bird regardless of AF mode
2) if the bird is flying towards you and close then it may not lock on the bird
3) if the bird is close to the water surface, it tends to jump onto the water instead
4) in a 30fps series, some of the frames will be OOF
I wonder if these have been fixed or at least mitigated with the A9III AI focusing?
Prediction ... I believe we will see many used A9 MKiii's up for sale when the A1 MKii is announced I think most of us want the A1 50mpx stacked sensor with the AF & ergonomic improvements of the A9mkiii... And of course pre capture!
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I think most of us want the A1 50mpx stacked sensor with the AF & ergonomic improvements of the A9mkiii... And of course pre capture!