Introduction

Ease of Use

At the heart of the A9 III is a brand new 25.2 megapixel, 35mm full-frame (35.6 x 23.8 mm) Exmor RS CMOS stacked sensor with an optical low pass filter that delivers 24.6 megapixels for stills and 20.3 megapixels for movies, providing comparable resolution to its predecessor.

Much more important than the megapixel count, though, is the fact that the A9 III uses the world's first ever 35mm full-frame global shutter image sensor.

Rather than reading the sensor line by line, as with all other electronic shutters, a global shutter allows the A9 III to instantly read the entire sensor in one go.

This has a number of important benefits - it virtually eliminates rolling shutter in video, distortion of movement if the subject moves quickly across the frame, and flicker and banding under artificial lights, whilst providing an incredibly high shutter speed of 1/80,000th second.

Also flash-sync is available at any shutter speed, completely eliminating the need for a high-speed flash sync setting and allowing the photographer to overpower the sun and control the background exposure even at midday at base ISO with a high shutter speed, and just use a small, affordable flashgun as a fill-in light.

A future firmware upgrade will be required for Sony's existing F46RM and F60RM2 flashguns to enable 1/80,000th compatibility (at reduced power), but crucially this feature is also available for third-party flashguns too.

Note that for the moment the maximum shutter speed is 1/16,000th second when the A9 III is set to any burst shooting mode, even the Low setting. This will apparently be changed to 1/80,000th sec in March 2024 via a firmware update.

The technological leap to a global electronic shutter means that the A9III completely dispenses with a traditional mechanical shutter, just like the Nikon Z9 and Z8.

So it's likely that as the global shutter becomes easier and cheaper to produce and slowly trickles down the range, the days of the progressive shutter, be that electronic or mechanical shutter, may be numbered, at least on higher-end cameras.

The A9III has a native ISO range is 250-25600, expandable to 125-51200 for stills, significantly narrower than the A9II which has a range of 100-12000 that is expandable to 50-204800.

Composite Raw Shooting is a brand new mode that takes up to 32 images to create full-resolution images with greatly reduced noise. Handheld shooting is possible in this mode, although you do need to run the images through Sony's Imaging Edge desktop software to process them.

At first glance the new Mark III iteration of the Sony A9 looks very much like 2019's Mark II version, which in turn was almost a complete doppelganger of the original A9 from 2017.

So if you were hoping for a Nikon Z9-esque, integrated-grip design on this new Alpha sports camera, then you'll be disappointed, instead having to make do with buying the optional VG-C5 vertical grip accessory which adds duplicate controls including the new C5 button and two NP-FZ100 batteries.

Sony have definitely taken the cautious approach here, as we can't imagine too many A9 III owners using it without having the vertical grip fitted, as the camera doesn't balance at all well without it when used with the longer telephoto lenses like the equally new FE 300mm F2.8.

On the other hand, it does allow for more flexibility for those times when you might want to use the A9 III with smaller lenses and you don't want a big, imposing camera, where it feels just like every other Alpha full-framer that has been released in the last few years.

That's not quite true, though, as Sony have significantly tweaked the design of the A9 III's own hand-grip, which is larger than its predecessors and perhaps more importantly spaced further away from the lens mount, which allows for more room for your fingers to curl around the grip without touching the attached lens.

While this does necessitate the creation and subsequent purchase of yet another vertical grip, it is a subtle but very welcome improvement.

It also means that the A9 III is wider and therefore 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.

In the seemingly ever-constant pursuit of things being smaller and lighter, though, this departure from the sizing norm is a breath of fresh air given that it makes the A9III significantly easier to use.

Other subtle changes include moving the shutter button slightly forward to better facilitate its release, and a new custom button (C5) on the front of the camera which by default is assigned to the new Continuous Speed Shooting Boost function.

This function provides an easy way to engage the headline-grabbing 120fps burst mode - yes, 120 frames per second for 1.6 seconds at full 24 megapixel resolution for both JPEG and 14-bit Raw formats with full-time AF/AE! - at the press of a button, if you're not already shooting at 120fps.

So Sony have recognised the fact that 120fps is actually too fast for the majority of situations and come up with a way of using it only at the moment that it's most needed.

The only drawback from an operational point of view is that you need to hold the button down whilst you're shooting, which is a little awkward in practice - but then you only need to do it for a split-second.

Commendably, the 120fps burst mode isn't dependent on using a specific speed-rated memory card. You can select it when using any CFexpress Type A or SD card, with the type/speed of card affecting how quickly the buffer is cleared rather than limiting the frame rate.

You will need to make sure that your lenses are compatible with the 120fps mode with AF/AE tracking - Sony have provided a handy list here.

Another new hardware feature is the ability to deactivate the drive mode dial and assign it to the Function menu or a custom button, useful in the dark or if the camera is being protected in some way from the elements.

Pre-capture is a feature that we've seen before on other manufacturers' cameras, but is a first for Sony. When activated, up to 120 frames per second are temporarily stored while the shutter button is half-pressed, and up to 1 second before can be captured once the shutter is fully pressed, providing a degree of leniency for fast-moving action.

Other hardware improvements on the Mark III A9 have largely been imported from other Alpha models, but are no less noteworthy.

These include the 3.2-inch, 2095K dot resolution, 4-axis LCD screen from the A7R V and which is unique to Sony, which can be flipped out to the side, rotated to the front, folded against the back of the camera to help protect it, and set to many other positions in-between.

It makes the camera ever-so-slightly thicker than its predecessor, but more than makes up for that with its incredible versatility.

In terms of touch-screen functionality, the new Alpha A7R V thankfully follows in the footsteps of the A7R V, inheriting the same menu structure and upgraded touch control, rather than the crippled touchscreen and more complex menu system of earlier Alpha models.

It also has the same very impressive 9.44M-dot OLED Quad-XGA electronic viewfinder with 0.90x magnification, again taken from the A7R V, although this one now has a refresh rate of up to 240fps in the new Higher mode, rather than 120fps, although the resolution is reduced at 240fps.

Note that the 120fps High frame rate is now compatible with the high quality display setting, something that is not possible on the flagship Alpha 1.

Just like the A1, the A9III has a pair of Bionz XR processors, which among other things powers the frankly amazing AI-based Real-time Recognition AF system.

The Sony A9 III's AF system has 759 on-sensor phase detection points that cover approximately 95% of the image area and it can focus down to -5EV, just short of the the -6EV achieved by the A7S III and better than the A1's -4EV rating.

The A9 III can recognise a human via its pose as well as its eye and face. So if the person's head is turned away from the camera, it will still accurately detect the subject as human based on its AI deep learning.

It can also recognise animals, birds, insects, airplanes, and cars/trains. In the latter category, it is now capable of focusing on helmets, it can recognise the eyes of some grazing and small animals, and more easily pinpoint the eyes of a variety of bird types as well as recognising bird bodies.

A new Animal/Bird setting eliminates the need to switch between those settings to shoot animals or birds, although we'd still like an Auto Subject recognition mode, as featured on some rival cameras.

Thanks to a newly redesigned stabilisation unit previously debuted on the A7R V, the A9 III now offers up to 8 stops of in-body stabilisation, up from 5.5 stops on the A9 II, making it the joint-most capable Alpha camera in this regard.

The A9 III also benefits from having a special Active Mode that increases stabilization for hand-held movie shooting by using the BIONZ XR processors.

Providing even more compensation at the expense of an increased crop factor is the new Dynamic Active Mode, which improves the stabilisation by more than 30% over the existing Active Mode.

The A9 III utilises 6K oversampling for 4K 60p video, and it also supports 4K 120p without cropping for the first time in an Alpha body, both distortion-free (no jello effect) thanks to the global shutter, recorded internally using All-I encoding at 10-bit 4:2:2 quality.

It can output 16-bit Raw video over HDMI to an external recorder and supports both S-Log3 (base ISO 2000) and the same S-Cinetone (base IOS 320) colour matrix from the VENICE, FX6, and other Cinema Line cameras, making it easier to integrate into a professional workflow when using different types of camera.

Both of the memory card slots can be used for either SD UHS-I/II compliant memory cards or faster CFexpress Type A cards, just like the Alpha 1 and A7R V although those Type A cards are still prohibitively expensive.

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Sony A9 III camera, which were all taken using the 24.6 megapixel Extra Fine JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.

Product Images

Main Rivals

Listed below are some of the rivals of the Sony A9 III.

Specifications

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