While the use of apodization elements or filters in lenses is no longer a unique proposition, the introduction of this lens for full-frame Sony mirrorless cameras is bound to be treated with some excitement. Even though the lens is somewhat limited by the T5.6 maximum aperture, the inclusion of optical stabilization goes some way toward offsetting that in daylight. Although we can’t comment on the quality of the lens’s most intriguing quality (the blurring in the out of focus planes), there’s no denying that the Sony FE 100mm F2.8 STF GM OSS has interesting specs and excellent optical quality.
Dpreview updated their A9 review by including studio shots and a few more findings:
Dynamic Range:
The A9 is at least a stop behind that of the a7R II. A more relevant comparison might be to the a9’s direct peers: it performs neck-and-neck with the Canon 1D X II (and perhaps a bit better at ISOs above 640 thanks to its dual-gain design), and a full stop better than the Nikon D5 at base ISO. For most sports photographers this won’t matter much, but those shooting high contrast scenes may require workarounds other cameras – such as the a7R II – don’t.
ISO performance:
Above ISO 640, the camera is fairly ISO-invariant, since it’s overcome most of its downstream read noise, but there’s still some benefit to increasing ISO to keep noise levels low if your scene demands it. Below ISO 640, the lower conversion gain means that you’ll start to see more (read) noise if you push shadows as opposed to having them pushed in-camera by increasing ISO gain.
RAW performance: Although at first glance the a9 appears slightly softer than the Nikon D5 and the Canon EOS-1D X II, it appears to be showing a similar amount of detail as well as color aliasing.
Compared with the Sony a7R II, you can see that the a7R II is slightly sharper as well as being much more detailed than the a9. The a9’s magnified live view doesn’t help achieve perfect focus, but no number of attempts yielded results as good as the a7R II at the pixel level. This leads us to believe the a9 includes an anti-aliasing filter, which makes sense for the pro market it’s targeted at.
JPEG output: At base ISO, clever sharpening means the text sharpens up nicely compared to the Raw, without any strange artifacts, and actually appears to show more detail than the D5 in some areas. The a9 basically shows no visible noise while foregoing the ‘haloing’ effect of the D5’s large-radius sharpening.
As the ISO values climb, both the a9 and D5 leave behind some luminance grain while all chroma noise is removed (this is also similar to the a7R II‘s behavior, though the a9 looks cleaner even when at normalized viewing sizes, showing a similar performance to the Canon 1D X II as well). At ISO 12800, the a9’s noise reduction removes some small details in the dead leaves pattern, though it does a much better job than the Canon, and seems to be trading punches in detail retention with the D5 at ISO 6400 in other areas compared.
Just my two-cent: You have to compare apple’s with apple’s and orange’s with orange’s. The A9 is not an “A7rII with faster autofocus“. It is a camera trimmed for speed and aimed for sports photographers. This means for example the A9 is aimed to give the best results at mid ISO (Sports photographer do need fast shutter speeds). If you compare the A9 with the more expensive competition Sony seems to have done an excellent work in terms of Image Quality and Autofocus performance.
That said we still have to understand if banding and overheating are two real issues or something that easily can be fixed with proper settings or via future Sony firmware upgrade. I can already tell you that I heard from reliable source that Sony is checking into this, and it seems like we can get some good news very soon… ;)
I want to emphasize that the absolute noise level is low in the a9, but the periodic nature of the read noise and the PRNU will cause visible noise to be more objectionable that it would be if it were random.
So the problem with the A9 “banding” seems to be the noise pattern on the red channel. It’s not random enough to avoid it. I do hope Sony will work on this to fix it via firmware upgrade.
Alin Popescu posted his one week review and Bird shooting experience:
I tell you, as long as I locked focus on the bird (Expanded Flexible Spot Lock-on AF), then the A9 did it’s magic tracking the absolutely erratic flight of these magnificent creatures.
Bear in mind I’ve only shot one wedding with the A9 so far, it’s hard not to jump to conclusions. Sod it, I’m going to jump to a conclusion. MIND BLOWING. A7RII focusing is acceptably fast, impressively accurate, and tracking is good enough for most wedding situations. The A9 is quite simply another league, another stratosphere! Focusing feels effortless and the hit-rate destroys my D4s.
Also Mariano Friginal tested the A9 for wedding. Ryan Armbrust did an Event Photography with the A9. And there is a sports Photography report by Qamera: They tested both Canon and Nikon lenses on the A9. At the end the conclusion is simple…we need fast native E-mount tele lenses :)
Three small updates on the overheating saga:
1) Sony reached out ThatCameraGuy to find out more about the Over the issue. Glad to see Sony taking a promopt response on this. I am confident this will be solved positively 2) Jared Matthew Jarvis did some more testing and had no issues whatssoever.
3) Similar report by Edde Burgess:
We now learned via first Sony A9 owners that in a very specific situation (shooting under direct sunlight) the A9 overheating indicator turns on after 20-40 minutes. What’s also very strange is that only a handful of people noticed this while most of the photographers seem to not have had any issue at all. Also to be noted: It doesn’t seem the camera ia actually shutting down neither. Here are a few new information:
On the video above you can watch an update on ThatCameraGuy A9 overheating report. I understand he is upset and I am glad he exposed the problem. A $4,500 camera should just work out of the box. Also a few more people reported the same annoying problem. So this is not just him having noted this!
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Jared Matthew Jarvis reported the same A9 overheating indicator issue on our A9 facebook group (there is a video too). But he also discovered more details: After he had the “indicator” warning when shooting under direct sunlight he remade the test indoor:
“It’s warmer physically than it was ever when I had it outside yesterday when the heat indicator came on, yet there is no warning yet. Maybe the a9 just hates sunlight. I no longer want to call this an overheating “issue”. My camera has not yet at any point overheated and I’ve been putting it through its paces in scenarios far more stressful than most real world shooting. If anything I think Sony may have been a bit over zealous with their overheating warning considering the issues they’ve had with heat in the past
He also noted this: “The warmest part on the camera is the base plate around the tripod mount.” So maybe keeping the A9 on a hot surface exposed previously by sunlight triggered the warning?
Many A9 owners also reported that they had no issues under similar conditions:
– Andreas Bechthold wrote on the A9 group: “I had it in 92 degrees (Fahrenheit) yesterday with about 2000 shots. Worked nice, not Problem at all….”
– Alin Popescu told me this: “I’ve shot in 33 degrees celsius for more than 2h. Then on streets of Bucharest, at an entire wedding, birds, etc.. Never saw that warning!”
– Max Yuryev also commented on ThatCameraGuy video: “I shot a ton with it with not a single overheating icon“
If what Jared Matthew and others are reporting are true it seems like the “overheating indicator” is reaction wrong on direct sunlight and not on the real heat inside the camera. I invite A9 users to test the camera for a long time under direct sunlight (and please do record what happens). Let’s see if we can make some sense out fo this story. But to me this sounds more like a software problem or a problem related to a few “flawed” cameras.
In the meantime Sony will have for sure taken notice of that buzz on the web and I hope they will make some statement soon.
Photonstophotos posted the final Sony A9 Dynamic Range test. It’s very good news to see that there is nearly no trade-off between the A9 electronic shutter and mechanical shutter. The A9 is probably the first camera that gives you such impressive results in electronic shutter mode.
And another good news is that the A9 has no banding with LED light as tested by Skimmel (Click here).
I am sure Sony is right now working on the issues we mentioned yesterday:
1) Banding issue on the red channel of the images when shooting on electronic shutter mode (it’s not visible in normal conditions, you have to work on extreme settings in postprocessing to see this) 2) Indicator warning should activate only when it’s really super necessary.
3) Fix the star eating bug
I take the Sony a9 out for a test run at a swim meet. The overheating indicator turned on within 20 minutes of use in 81 degree Fahrenheit temperature. Not exactly what I would call “Pro” like. There are a lot of positive things about this camera, but this is actually a big deal for what I do, considering Sony marketed this as an actual sports camera.
SAR note:
So far most of the early testers did not have the issue reported by ThatCameraGuy. The few who had this issue all did report about the “indicator warning” turning on while in ZERO cases the camera did actually shut down because of overheating. In the best scenario Sony’s “warning” system is simply turning on way too early (which is annoying anyway).
Star eating: Jim Kasson confirms that the A9 is a “star eater” too (just like the A7 cameras with the latest firmware version). He tested the electronic shutter only, so maybe in mechanical shutter mode this is not going to happen. This is 100% a problem that can be fixed via firmware issue.
While all this is disappointing news I also do know that it is perfectly normal to find issues on newly released cameras. And I bet Sony will take note of those of these issues and fix them (or at least mitigate them) soon
To sum up: Dear Sony please do this on the next A9 firmware update:
1) Fix the banding issue on the red channel of your images when shooting on electronic shutter mode 2) Mitigate overheating (or delay the indicator warning to activate when it’s really super necessary).
3) Fix the star eating bug
4) Add S-Log
But still my suggestion to Sony remains the same: For the next A7rIII and A7sIII please do make a larger body for the following reasons:
Eliminate any overheating issue (particularly important for the A7sIII model which is mainly used for video purpose)
Better ergonomic for people with big Hands like Donald Trump…sorry for the bad joke :)
Better handling with bigger lenses (you should not be forced to buy a battery grip to fix this)
At the end I believe the Camera Size gets less important on pro cameras. Pro’s don’t really care about that…
Nikon photographer Lars Ronbog tested the new Sony A9 on a soccer field and the conclusion is:
The AF worked fine – better or worse than my Nikon? Not better, but it was acceptable for a first time use – more games and photographing other kind of sports would be needed to draw the final conclusion.
Is the A9 a game changer? No – but it is probably the beginning of a game changer. Within 5 years a pro-sportsshooter could very well be working with mirrorless cameras.
Would I change my Nikon for this camera? No!
Three reasons to why not: – Not enough pro-lenses – No IPTC in the camera ( this could be solved with a firmware-update) – Not enough accessories
