Sony has launched what it's calling its "most technologically advanced" digital camera yet, and it certainly looks like a beast on paper.
The new A9 is a full-frame mirrorless camera that comes packing a load of features that should suit professional photographers looking for a great mirrorless offering.
Sony's latest flagship mirrorless sits above the Alpha 7 range, and features a blackout-free viewfinder that allows for continuous shooting at up to 20fps and offers 60 AF/AE tracking calculations per second.
It's all down to what Sony is claiming is the world's first full-frame stacked Exmor RS CMOS sensor, which comes with a 24.2-megapixel resolution.
Sony's sensor allows for an impressive ISO range of 100–51,200, expandable to 50–204,800, along with super-fast data speed processing at up to 20 times faster than the company's previous full-frame mirrorless cameras.
There's also vibration-free shooting at speeds up to 1/32,000 sec with a fully electronic and silent shutter, along with a 5-axis image stabilisation system.
Not enough for you? Well, there's plenty more, starting with the 693 phase-detect autofocus points, covering 93% of the frame.
The hybrid AF setup is said to be about 25% faster than the Alpha A7R II, and should ensure fast-moving subjects are captured without difficulty.
Meanwhile, the new high-resolution, high-luminance Quad-VGA OLED Tru-Finder viewfinder packs around 3,686,000 dots, which is the highest-resolution viewfinder Sony has yet packed into a camera and will produce highly-detailed shots.
The A9 can also shoot 4K video (3840 x 2160p), using full pixel readout without pixel binning to collect 6K of information – which means it oversamples the image to make sure you get super-high quality footage.
Sony has also made sure the camera can shoot Full HD video at 120fps, and there's an Ethernet port to make for easy file transfer, along with two SD card slots.
The company will release the A9 on May 25 for $4500 in the US while Europeans will have to wait until June when the camera will arrive for £4500 in the UK and €5300 in the rest of Europe.
