Sony Launched A1 Overkill Camera With $6489 Pricing

Sony Launched a1 overkill camera with $6489 pricing

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by Amelia Scott — 4 years ago in Gadgets 2 min. read
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Sony has been dominating the mirrorless camera market for the past few years, but we always knew it intended to release a flagship camera lineup even more powerful than its popular a7 and a9 models.

That new flagship arrived today: the Sony a1. At $6,498, it’s clearly aimed at professional photographers and videographers only — or those with big enough budgets.

With a 50MP sensor using a set of fresh Bionz XR chips, the camera can capture 30 frames per second. I am not talking about movie here: that is a whopping 30 full-resolution RAW pictures per second.

It is almost like having the capability to shoot 50MP movie in bursts, giving photographers ample flexibility for capturing the perfect moment. In contrast, 4K movie is just about 8.3MP, whilst 8K movie is all about 33.2MP.

Speaking of movie, the camera may capture 4K in 120fps, enabling you to slow down high-definition video longer than typically possible. Additionally, it makes it relatively simple to easily resample that footage into a cinematic 24fps, as well as 30 or 60fps

The a1 catches 8K in 30p, which can be neat on a spec sheet, but not quite as useful given the lack of 8K TVs. Obviously, shooting 8K provides you some extra dinning room for cropping and panning movie meant for lower resolution screens. In reality, the camera is really shooting footage 8.6K — with the complete width of the detector instead of cropping — and exporting it to 8K. That should really enhance the sharpness much more.

Regardless of the bigger detector, Sony claims it has been in a position to reduce rolling camera by 1.5x than the previous models, resulting in less rickety video through panning or bizarre artifacts in photographs. Additionally, it will help enhance flash sync to around 1/400 sec.
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Some other notable features:

  • Body structure stabilization to 5.5 stops (not new, but still nice to have).
  • Sony prices dynamic range at 15 stops, which can be taken advantage of in video with the S-Log 3 curve.
  • 199MP images can be completed by combining up to 16 images using Sony’s desktop software.
  • The viewfinder has a 0.9x magnification with a resolution of 9.44 million ‘dots,’ which translates to a resolution of about 2048×1526. That’s the best currently available, though if you drop down to 1600×1200 (5.76M dots), you are able to up the refresh rate to 240fps, providing a more lifelike display of motion.
  • The new AF system covers 92 percent of the sensor, calculates data 120 times per second, and can now track the eyes of birds in addition to other animals and people.
  • It supports 16-bit RAW video output via HDMI
  • It’s the first of Sony’s cameras to support lossless compressed RAW to offer the same quality in a smaller file size.

The camera is currently up for pre-order beginning tomorrow for $6,498, at the US ($8,500 CAD, $7,300, #6,500). Components are expected to start shipping about February 25 and wider availability in March

Amelia Scott

Amelia is a content manager of The Next Tech. She also includes the characteristics of her log in a fun way so readers will know what to expect from her work.

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