Sony has dominated the mirrorless camera market in recent years, but we’ve always known it intended to launch a flagship camera lineup even more powerful than its popular A7 and A9 models. That new flagship arrived today: the Sony a1. For $ 6,498, it is clearly aimed at professional photographers and videographers – or those with budgets big enough.
Featuring a 50MP sensor with a pair of new Bionz XR processors, the camera is capable of capturing 30 frames per second. I’m not talking about video here: it’s 30 full resolution RAW images per second. It’s practically like being able to shoot 50 MP video in bursts, giving photographers ample flexibility to capture the right moment. In comparison, 4K video is only about 8.3 MP, while 8K video is about 33.2 MP.
Speaking of video, the camera can record 4K at 120fps, allowing you to slow down high-resolution video more than is normally possible. It also makes it relatively easy to smoothly resample that footage to 24fps more cinematic, as well as 30 or 60fps.
The a1 captures 8K at 30p, which is nice on a spec sheet, but not so useful given the scarcity of 8K TVs. Obviously, filming in 8K offers more room for cutting and rotating videos intended for lower resolution displays. In fact, the camera is actually capturing images at 8.6K – using the full width of the sensor instead of cropping it – and resizing it to 8K. This should further improve the sharpness.
Despite the larger sensor, Sony claims it was able to reduce the rolling shutter by 1.5x compared to previous models, leading to less unstable video during movement or strange artifacts in the photos. It also helps to improve flash synchronization by up to 1/400 sec.
Some other notable features:
- Body image stabilization to 5.5 points (not new, but still good to have).
- Sony classifies the dynamic range at 15 points, which can be used in video with the S-Log 3 curve.
- 199MP images can be obtained by combining up to 16 images using Sony desktop software.
- The display has a magnification of 0.9x with a resolution of 9.44 million ‘dots’, which translates to a resolution of around 2048 × 1526. This is the best available today, although if you go down to 1600 × 1200 (5.76M points), you will be able to increase the refresh rate to 240fps, providing a more realistic motion display.
- The new AF system covers 92 percent of the sensor, calculates data 120 times per second and can now track the eyes of birds, as well as other animals and people.
- Supports 16-bit RAW video output via HDMI
- The a1 features dual-band Wi-Fi for faster photo transfers.
- It is the first of Sony’s cameras to support lossless compressed RAW to deliver the same quality in a smaller file size.
The camera is ready for order starting tomorrow for $ 6,498 in the US ($ 8,500 CAD, € 7,300, £ 6,500). youThe nits are expected to start trading on February 25th and will be available in March.
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Published January 26, 2021 – 23:04 UTC