Sony A9 experience - professional sport

[Martin Kristiansen]

Distortion and banding. Banding is what I run into at events the most with a slow-scanning shutter.

I usually leave the audio feedback turned off. The downside at high frame rates is I don't know how many frames I've exposed with each push of the shutter release.

Jim

Thanks for the reply. My experiences mirror yours. It’s such a weird camera to me that I am curious if my experiences are the same as other people’s. I don’t personally know anyone else using an A9. All my photographer friends are shooting Nikon, Canon and Sony.

I thought that the high frame rate silent shooting would be something of not much use but turns out not to be so. I have become quite fond of the A9

[shadowblade]

SB you have mentioned the weak A9 hot shoe on more than one occasion. It seems OK to me, rock solid. Did a bit of research on it and came up with a Sony recall and free repair on certain sequence of serial numbers. If you have a camera that falls within this range, and it’s quite early in the camera history, you have until end of 2020 to get the free repair.

Ha e you had any issues with your hot shoe? Are you aware on any other issues related to the A9 hotshoe? Any other information would be appreciated. As I say my hot shoe seems 100% and while I don’t abuse my equipment it does work hard and often and I like to be aware of potential issues. Thanks.

The pins on the Sony hotshoe (not unique to the A9) are much more eaaily damaged than the contacts on the Canon and Nikon hotshoes.

The construction of the hotshoe also seems a lot more lightweight than the Canon/Nikon one.

I've seen one instance of the metal of the hotshoe bending when a large speedlight attached to it was accidentally knocked on a branch.

In short, I'd happily attach a V860II or other similar large speedlight to a 5D4, 1Dx, D5 or D850 for light shooting, where i don't expect the gear to be jostled around much. I wouldn't trust the Sony hotshoe with that much leverage, in case the flash gets bumped - the Sony hotshoe is best used to attach a RF controller, with flash units attached to a flash bracket and controlled remotely.

[shadowblade]

Thanks for the reply. My experiences mirror yours. It’s such a weird camera to me that I am curious if my experiences are the same as other people’s. I don’t personally know anyone else using an A9. All my photographer friends are shooting Nikon, Canon and Sony.

I thought that the high frame rate silent shooting would be something of not much use but turns out not to be so. I have become quite fond of the A9

The A9's electronic shutter does a lot better with rolling shutter issues caused my artificial lighting than most other sensors out there, since the readout is much faster. But it's still there, and can still show itself if the subject and lighting are right. This isn't unique to electronic shutters - a mechanical curtain shutter can do the same thing. But mechanical shutters are a lot faster than most electronic shutters and are less likely to show it.

A global shutter would eliminate the issue entirely, but that's probably two generations away, and may show up on an APS-C body first.

[chez]

A global shutter would eliminate the issue entirely, but that's probably two generations away, and may show up on an APS-C body first.

Actually a global shutter is one of the rumours for the A92...stay tuned!

[kers]

Actually a global shutter is one of the rumours for the A92...stay tuned!

An electronic global shutter of 1/1000s or shorter you mean?- That would be a game changer, but probably too difficult to realize at this moment.

[chez]

An electronic global shutter of 1/1000s or shorter you mean?- That would be a game changer, but probably too difficult to realize at this moment.

I know Sony already has sensors with global shutters but I don't know the specs. When Sony says revolutionary as they talk about the A92, this would be one feature to make it so.

[BJL]

I know Sony already has sensors with global shutters but I don't know the specs. When Sony says revolutionary as they talk about the A92, this would be one feature to make it so.

Those are still video oriented sensors that sacrifice about one stop of DR; they use half the area of each photosite to store the previous frame being read out while the other half is accumulating the next frame. This type of global shutter has been around for many years but is never used in stills-oriented cameras. I don’t expect that to change until the DR loss is overcome. Panasonic is working on an alternative, using a layer in front of the sensor that can be electrically switched from transparent to opaque.