A buzzer beater jump shot at overtime to win a game, a penalty kick to break a deadlock, and a last minute burst of speed to outsprint an opponent—these are the events that have led to some of the world’s most iconic sports photographs of all time. Sports photographers know that know that most of the time preserving these moments is a combination of luck, timing and a lightning-fast camera.
Sony is introducing the brand new full-frame camera—the α9 (ILCE-9). The α9 revolutionizes sports photography and offers action photographers a must-have device in their arsenal that delivers photos worth publishing. The brand new α9 is touted as the most technologically advanced, innovative digital camera that Sony has ever created.
A New Standard of Speed and Focusing Accuracy
The α9 offers many impressive capabilities including high-speed, blackout-free continuous shooting at up to 20fps, 60 AF/AE tracking calculations per second, a maximum shutter speed of up to 1/32,000 second and more. Making these capabilities possible is its 35mm full-frame stacked Exmor RS™ CMOS sensor which processes data up to 20x faster than previous Sony full-frame mirrorless cameras.
Critical to the record-breaking speed of the new α9 is the combination of the new stacked 24.2 MP Exmor RS image sensor, new BIONZ X processor and front-end LSI.
The processor and front-end LSI are responsible for the larger continuous shooting buffer, enabling photographers to shoot at a blazing 20 fps4 with continuous AF/AE tracking for up to 362 JPEG or 241 RAW images.
This industry-leading speed is combined with a focusing system that features an incredible 693 phase detection AF points. Covering approximately 93% of the frame, the focusing system ensures that even the fastest moving subjects are reliably captured and tracked across the frame.
The camera’s innovative AF system tracks complex, erratic motion with higher accuracy than ever before, with the ability to calculate AF/AE at up to 60 times per second, regardless of shutter release and frame capture. Furthermore, when the shutter is released while shooting stills, the electronic viewfinder functions with absolutely no blackout, giving the user a seamless live view of their subject at all times. The Fast Hybrid AF system – pairing the speed and excellent tracking performance of phase detection AF with the precision of contrast AF – achieves approximately 25% faster performance when compared with α7R II, ensuring all fast-moving subjects are captured.
Professional Capabilities in a Compact Body
Sony’s new full-frame camera is equipped with the all-new, high-resolution, high-luminance Quad-VGA OLED Tru-Finder with approximately 3,686k dots for extremely accurate, true-to-life detail reproduction.
Currently the highest resolution viewfinder Sony has ever incorporated in an α camera, the new Tru-Finder features an optical design that includes a double-sided aspherical element, helping it to achieve 0.78x magnification and a level of corner to corner sharpness that is simply outstanding. The EVF also utilises a ZEISS® T* Coating to greatly reduce reflections, and has a fluorine coating on the outer lens that repels dirt.
This all adds up to a luminance that is 2x higher than the XGA OLED Tru-Finder from the α7R II, creating a viewfinder image with a brightness level that is nearly identical to the actual scene being framed, ensuring the most natural shooting experience. The frame rate of the Tru-Finder is even customisable, with options to set it for 60 fps or 120 fps to best match the action.
The α9 is also equipped with an innovative 5-axis image stabilisation system that provides a shutter speed advantage of 5.0 steps, ensuring the full power of the new sensor can be realised, even in challenging lighting. With a simple half press of the shutter button, the effect of the image stabilisation can be monitored in the viewfinder or on the LCD screen, allowing framing and focus to be accurately checked and continually monitored.
Double Battery Life, Double Memory
To ensure maximum usability and reliability, the camera features a new Z battery with approximately 2.2x the capacity of W batteries, as well as dual SD media card slots, including one that supports UHS-II cards. An Ethernet port (wired LAN terminal) is available as well, and there is a wide variety of new settings, controls and customisability options that are essential for working professionals.
Based on extensive customer feedback, the new camera offers two separate media card slots, including one for UHS-II media. The same data can simultaneously be recorded to both cards, or the user can choose to separate RAW / JPEG or still images / movies. Movies can also simultaneously be recorded to two cards for backup and more efficient data management.
High Sensitivity and Wide Dynamic Range
The 24.2 MP full-frame stacked CMOS sensor is back-illuminated, allowing it to capture maximum light and produce outstanding, true-to-life image quality. The sensor also enables the diverse ISO range of 100 – 51200, expandable to 50 – 204800, ensuring optimum image quality with minimum noise at all settings.
*
The α9 interchangeable lens camera will be available in the Philippines for P239,999 (cash) beginning July 1, 2017 in all Sony Centers and Sony Authorized Dealers nationwide.
