The Sony A9 III and Sony A9 II are each 24 megapixel full-frame mirrorless cameras which have a transparent give attention to offering as a lot pace as doable for sports activities and wildlife images.
Regardless of wanting similar to one another, they’re truly fairly totally different relating to their core specs.
So we’re bringing you this Sony A9 III vs Sony A9 II head-to-head comparability that will help you select between these two full-frame cameras.
It’s also possible to learn our detailed Sony A9 III assessment and Sony A9 II assessment to seek out out precisely what we consider each in way more depth.
Sensor
Each of those cameras provide very related megapixel counts, however use very totally different sensor applied sciences.
The Sony A9 II has a 35mm full-frame stacked Exmor RS CMOS sensor providing a decision of 24.2 megapixels.
The Sony A9 II has a 35mm full-frame stacked Exmor RS CMOS sensor providing a decision of 24.6 megapixels.
The important thing distinction between them is an enormous one although – the A9 III makes use of the world’s first ever 35mm full-frame international shutter picture sensor, whereas the A9 II has a extra typical progressive sensor design.
So whereas the A9II reads out the sensor line by line, a worldwide shutter permits the A9 III to immediately learn the complete sensor in a single go.
This has numerous essential advantages. It nearly eliminates rolling shutter in video, distortion of motion if the topic strikes rapidly throughout the body, and flicker and banding below synthetic lights, while offering an extremely excessive shutter pace of 1/80,000th second.
The technological leap to a worldwide digital shutter implies that the A9III fully dispenses with a conventional mechanical shutter. the A9 II has each an digital and a mechanical shutter.
Processor
The A9 III makes use of two of the very newest BIONZ XR processors, which provide 8x extra processing energy than the BIONZ X processor discovered within the earlier A9 II.
ISO Velocity
The A9 II has a local ISO vary of 100-1200 that’s expandable to 50-204800.
The ISO vary of the A9 III is 250-25600, expandable to 125-51200 for stills, as a attribute of the worldwide shutter sensor is a better base ISO pace.
Video
The A9 III presents way more superior video recording specs and efficiency than the A9 II.
It options 6K oversampling for 4K 60p and 4K 120p with out cropping, all distortion-free (no jello impact) in 10-bit 4:2:2 S-log3 / S-Cinetone, with Dynamic Energetic Mode stabilisation, respiration compensation and customized LUTS all out there.
The Sony A9 II may shoot and report 4K video utilizing a full pixel readout with out pixel binning to gather 6K of data, however solely at 30p. It may output uncompressed UHD 4K, 3840 x 2160 pixel video (30p/24p/25p) at a 10-bit 4:2:2 colour depth.
Autofocus
The Sony A9 III’s AF system has 759 on-sensor section detection factors that cowl roughly 95% of the picture space and it will possibly focus all the way down to -5EV.
It may recognise a human through its pose in addition to its eye and face. So if the particular person’s head is turned away from the digicam, it can nonetheless precisely detect the topic as human based mostly on its AI deep studying.
It may additionally recognise animals, birds, bugs, airplanes, and vehicles/trains. Within the latter class, it’s now able to specializing in helmets, it will possibly recognise the eyes of some grazing and small animals, and extra simply pinpoint the eyes of quite a lot of chook varieties in addition to recognising chook our bodies.
A brand new Animal/Chicken setting eliminates the necessity to swap between these settings to shoot animals or birds.
The older A9 II has 693 focal aircraft section detection AF factors that cowl roughly 93% of the body and may focus all the way down to -3EV. It solely has the Actual-time AF monitoring system, moderately than the A9 III’s newer AI-based Actual-time Recognition system.
Burst Capturing
The A9 II can shoot repeatedly at 20fps for as much as 241 RAW / 362 JPEG or 12-bit Compressed Uncooked photographs with full-time AF/AE and no blackout between frames.
The newer A9 III can report an astonishing 120 frames per second for 192 frames / 1.6 seconds at full 24 megapixel decision for each JPEG and 14-bit Uncooked codecs with full-time AF/AE and no blackout between frames.
Pre-capture is a brand new characteristic on the A9 III that we have seen earlier than on different producers’ cameras, however is a primary for Sony. When activated, as much as 120 frames per second are quickly saved whereas the shutter button is half-pressed, and as much as 1 second earlier than might be captured as soon as the shutter is absolutely pressed, offering a level of leniency for fast-moving motion.
The Steady Velocity Capturing Increase operate gives a straightforward option to interact the headline-grabbing 120fps burst mode – sure, 120 frames per second for 1.6 seconds at full 24 megapixel decision for each JPEG and 14-bit Uncooked codecs with full-time AF/AE! – on the press of a button, should you’re not already capturing at 120fps.
Shutter Velocity
The A9 II has a really quick most shutter pace of 1/32,000th second because of its digital shutter, however the A9III ups the ante by providing an much more spectacular 1/80,000th shutter pace for stills.
Notice that for the second the utmost shutter pace is 1/16,000th second when the A9 III is ready to any burst capturing mode, even the Low setting. This may apparently be modified to 1/80,000th sec in March 2024 through a firmware replace.
Flash Sync Velocity
Flash-sync is on the market at any shutter pace as much as 1/80,000th sec on the A9 III because of its international shutter, fully eliminating the necessity for a high-speed flash sync setting,
This probably permits the photographer to overpower the solar and management the background publicity even at noon at base ISO with a excessive shutter pace, and simply use a small, inexpensive flashgun as a fill-in gentle.
Compared the A9 II has a flash sync pace of 1/250 sec, which is way more typical.
Physique
Sony have considerably tweaked the design of the A9 III’s hand-grip, which is bigger than its predecessors and maybe extra importantly spaced additional away from the lens mount, which permits for extra room on your fingers to twist across the grip with out touching the connected lens.
The A9 III is wider and subsequently heavier than its predecessor, measuring 136.1 x 96.9 x 82.9 mm and weighing 702 g / 1 lb 8.8 oz, versus 128.9 x 96.4 x 77.5 mm and 678 g / 1.49 lb on the Mark II.
Different refined modifications embody shifting the shutter button barely ahead to higher facilitate its launch, and a brand new customized button (C5) on the entrance of the digicam.
Viewfinder
The A9 III has a significantly better viewfinder than the A9 II – a class-leading 9.44M-dot OLED Quad-XGA digital viewfinder with 0.90x magnification and a refresh fee of as much as 240fps.
The A9 II has a lower-res Quad-VGA OLED Tru-Finder with roughly 3,686k dots, a magnification of 0.78x and 120fps most refresh fee.
LCD Display
The A9 III inherits the three.2-inch, 2095K dot decision, 4-axis LCD display from the A7R V and which is exclusive to Sony, which might be flipped out to the aspect, rotated to the entrance, folded in opposition to the again of the digicam to assist shield it, and set to many different positions in-between.
The A9 II has a 3-inch, 1,440K-dot decision LCD display which might be tilted as much as 41° downwards to shoot over crowds or as much as 107° upwards, however not forwards or out to the aspect.
IBIS
Each cameras have 5-axis optical in-body picture stabilisation that corrects for pitch and yaw shake.
Due to a newly redesigned stabilisation unit, the A9 III presents as much as 8 stops of in-body stabilisation, making it probably the most succesful Alpha digicam on this regard.
The Sony A9 II has a stabilisation unit which solely presents as much as 5.5 stops of in-body stabilisation.
The A9 III additionally advantages from having two digital stabilization modes for video recording. There is a particular Energetic Mode that will increase stabilization for hand-held film capturing through the use of the BIONZ XR processors.
Offering much more compensation on the expense of an elevated crop issue is the brand new Dynamic Energetic Mode, which improves the stabilisation by greater than 30% over the Energetic Mode.
Reminiscence Playing cards
The A9 II has twin SD reminiscence card slots which use the quickest UHS-II customary.
The A9 III additionally has twin slots, however each of them can be utilized for both SD UHS-I/II compliant reminiscence playing cards or sooner CFexpress Sort A playing cards.
Battery Life
The Sony A9 III makes use of precisely the identical massive capability NP-FZ100 battery because the A9 II mannequin.
The A9 II is able to recording 690 photographs utilizing the LCD display and 500 when utilizing the EVF.
The A9 III is simply able to recording 530 photographs utilizing the LCD display and 400 when utilizing the EVF, presumably because of its larger energy consumption.
Each cameras will also be powered and charged through a USB connection, which is beneficial should you’re out and about and have a suitable powerbank to plug the digicam into, and each use the newer USB-C variant.
Value
The Sony A9 III is priced at £6100 / $6000 / €7000 body-only within the UK, US and Europe respectively.
The A9 II is priced at £4800 / $4500 / €5400 body-only within the UK, US and Europe respectively.
Conclusion
Selecting between the brand new Sony A9 III and the A9 II actually comes all the way down to the value you are actually ready to pay for the technologically superior newer mannequin, which because of its progressive international shutter presents numerous vital advantages while additionally inheriting most of the advances that Sony have made on different Alpha cameras over the past 4 years.
So what do you suppose? Would you select the older, cheaper Sony A9 II or the newer, pricier A9 III? Go away a remark beneath!
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