[UPDATE] Sony Malaysia has confirmed that the A9 III is coming to Malaysia, sometime in Q1 of 2024.
Remember the teaser made by Sony’s Alpha division? Well, it turns out it is the official launch of the new Sony A9 III full-frame camera. It is the first full-frame body with a global shutter and a laundry list of updates and new features.
In a nutshell, the global shutter is different from the normal electronic shutter on the market. Instead of capturing the image pixel row by pixel row, a global shutter exposes all of the sensor at once, and this results in faster image capturing and no ‘jelly-effect’ when recording fast-moving videos.
The Sony A9 III is the world’s first full-frame global shutter image sensor. It promises a blackout-free 120 frames per second shooting, with real-time recognition autofocus using a dedicated AI processing unit. This translates to about 120 images captured per second – faster than most video cameras on the market right now.
It offers an impressive new shooting speed of 1/80,000s; alas, the body ‘only’ goes as fast as 1/16,000s when shooting continuously. Now with a global shutter, you can also flash sync at any shutter speed without a problem. The full-frame stacked 24.6-megapixel CMOS image sensor can shoot at 120 frames per second with full autofocus and automatic exposure tracking and metering.
“The Alpha 9 III full-frame camera is a landmark achievement for the industry. Professionals everywhere can achieve even more dynamic expressions when the Alpha 9 III is combined with our rich lineup of lenses, in particular with the new 300mm F2.8 G Master OSS – the world’s lightestii large-aperture telephoto lens.”
Yang Cheng, Vice President, Imaging Solutions, Sony Electronics.
In the camera is the Bionz XR image processor, the same as in the flagship A1. This means the camera has up to eight times more processing power than the A9 II.
A new mode with the A9 III is the Pre-Capture, where the camera records everything up to a second before you ever press the shutter button. It is only one second, but the camera captures it at 120fps, so you will never miss the shot.
Sony is promising its best autofocus and subject recognition systems with the A9 III. There is a 759-point AF system, a carryover from the A9 II. It covers 95.6% of the image sensor and the camera promises autofocus down to -5 EV. The camera’s in-body five-axis image stabilization system promises up to eight stops of shake correction.
For video, you will get 6K oversampling for 4K60p video, or 4K120p without a crop – the first Alpha camera to offer this. There will be 10-bit 4:2:2 All-I, 16-bit RAW output, S-Cinetone and S-Log3, plus dynamic active mode stabilization for videographers to play around with.
Sony also has updated the design of the body – it is now a bit more ergonomic in the hands and a four-axis multi-angle LCD monitor. The monitor is a 3.2-inch touch display with 2,095K dots and a wide colour gamut (DCI-P3).
There is also a new vertical grip that (unfortunately) screws to the bottom of the camera and also offers parallel power, which the batteries in the body and the grip will be used simultaneously, instead one after the other.
The Sony A9 III will be coming next year for USD 5,999(about RM 27,997) body only. Sony also announced a new full-frame 300mm f/2.8 G Master lens which will also be available next year for USD5,999 (about RM 27,997). There is no news for Malaysian availability as of press time.
