Sony a9 III vs Sony a1: Which Camera Should You Buy?

i shoot with the A1 and have no thoughts in buying the A9iii the A1 is a nut machine i love the 50mp , the speed, the serious fexibility of the camera for stills and video

Every time new cameras come out, we are all amazed at the technological advancements. Pros and people with money are probably having a lot of fun with these cameras. As an amateur and as a retiree, my budget is limited. I had to sell some older pieces of gear in order to help finance the purchase of the new at the time A7RV. I am not into video so, for me, it is the perfect camera. I hope my joy of using it will last a few years.

I have the A1 and bought the A9iii. For me, the flip screen, precapture, latest AF system, the newer still/vid/S&P selector, a "*" on the dial for stills framerates so they can be adjusted digitally with bottons, and general speed of the camera itself is enough to have be selling my A1. (formatting a card is almost instantaneous and buffer dumping to a v90 card is extremely fast). There are a lot of usability upgrades that has close to doubled the speed i can operate. I pretty much always shoot at RAW lossless M anyway on my A1. I should say that i have an A7RV for work where i need the extra MP. i am very impressed with this new A9iii.

The A9iii is fantastic! I ordered right away. I shoot action and had two A9 bodies (I love the a9 series and couldn’t wait). In my opinion and for what I do 50mp isn’t needed, 24 is more than enough. The A9 iii doesn’t miss in any lighting situation. I don’t care about 250 iso it just bumps my shutter even more. 135 1.8, 50 1.2. It doesn’t miss.

Hey Jared. I have an A1 but bought an A9iii. I love the 50Mega Pixels of the A1 but for shooting sports the A9iii had some distinct advantages for sports such as baseball. Ball going into the glove every time. Bat on ball just about all the time. Global shutter so no bent hockey stick on slap shots. Those are just a few off the top of my head. Hope to see you in Philadelphia soon. Thanks for what you do.

Still comparing the A1 with other cameras three years after release 😎 What a great camera.

The crop option with my a1 is AMAZING, absolutely love having options.

I'm buying the Sony A9 III for my YouTube channel, thanks for the great video, I was thinking of making the transition to 8K, but really plan on waiting until RTX 5090 NVIDIA GPU releases, when the processing power for 8k improves I'm going to pair the hardware with a Sony Burano 8K and Inspire 3 8K to film at 60 fps - 120 fps. Having a more powerful graphics card is important, as the render times for my projects at 4K have started to hit 3 hours mainly due to the use of slow-mo and hyper-lapse effects, if I were to stack added frames at a higher resolution I doubt the render times will look all that great. For now, I'm thinking of filming primarily on a Sony A9 III and a DJI MAVIC 3 PRO by end of year at 4k 120 fps. My budget for extra film gear sits at around $10,000. So, I've mostly been focused on improving the visual quality at 4K videography and found the Sony A9 III to be the correct choice given my current PC hardware being a bottleneck for 8K video capture. When the price of 8k TVs drop to $999 I might switch to an Alpha 1 II series when it comes out, or try to make the jump to a Sony Burano 8K at $25,000. Paired with Inspire 3 at $15,000 to go for that true cinematic look on my VLOG series at 8K with high frames. I just feel nervous to try and film at really high frames and then edit 8k frames without a next-generation Nvidia card, and I already budgeted for an RTX 4080 to make the switch to higher FPS 4k video, which will already cause the video size to be about 4x larger due to having 4x the frames from 25 fps to 120 fps. Simply increasing the fps for rendering purposes and my use of slow and hyperlapse capture in my video series is going to cause too much of a demand on my PC hardware to where my render times could go from 3 hours to 12 hours on an RTX 2060, which is why I'm hoping that my budget for an RTX 4080 to be sufficient to handle the added FPS from 4K 120. Even so, I find myself filming at a 4K XAVC 25p and a lot of people don't even do that in LA for their VLOGs or film outside their homes. In other words, for the sake of broad action videography for my VLOG, and having environmental flexibility, I prefer editing outside of a cine-grade tone, and prefer preset color defaults that work with minimal visual distortions and without rolling shutter effect to take into consideration limited lighting control, or control over lighting in environment. It's why cinema cameras are great if you have control over environmental lights, but when running and filming and videoing you might not have control over physical lighting when compared to cinema sets, journaling and vlogging are so different and requires added flexibility in frame. It's why ZV-E10 did so good with VLOGs on YouTube, and it's what I use to film currently. But, I plan on making the switch to Sony A9 III and will pair with a DJI Mavic 3 PRO to create a more powerful visual image with an emphasis on 120 FPS being the transition point in my VLOG series... I also pair this with an upgrade to an RTX 4080 soon, which should power my video editing as I make the transition from 4K 25p to 4k 120p quality video on my Youtube series with zero rolling bar effect due to global shutter providing added flexibility when filming everywhere across the USA and from where I live in Los Angeles. I really appreciate the review, it makes me a little more confident with what little budget I have for equipment this year... some might say my $10,000 budget is massive, but it only covers one camera sensor, one drone, one laptop, and a couple camera accessories (lenses and etc). It's very competitive when compared to the gear set-ups for most amateurs, but it's still a mile away from the quality achieved from studio level equipment like a Sony Burano or Venice 2. That being said, I'm sure I'll get my hands on a Burano if I work hard enough over the next 24 months.

I think both are valid options for general use. I would consider the A9 for sports, since no bending whatsoever is a really nice feature

I have the Sony A1 and I have been using it for a couple of years. I am perfectly happy with the camera and now focusing solely on my photography itself. Don't get me wrong I like looking at the new cameras that Sony is coming out with, but nothing more than that.

As an A1 shooter and wildlife photographer I’m sticking with my 50mp at 30fps. Cropping is important in my world and 24mp is too much of a step backwards even with all the awesome tech.

I have the A1 and the A9III, but I find myself picking up the A9 the most. It feels so good in the hand and I love the screen.

The A1 always starts with 14bits also on compressed raw. After the compression you and up with about 13bits same as the A9III when using compressed raw. All the old cameras used a 12bits container for compressed raws the A1 and later highend sony cameras do not. Kind of amazing that after 2 years many people still don't see that there are 2 versions of the lossy compressed in sony cameras..

I just got an A1 after waiting a long time for the release of the A9III. I could not justify the money for a camera with image quality no better and maybe slightly worse than my 2017 A9. The 50MP of the A1 offers something different for me. No one is talking about moiré , some say the A9III will be better others say no. moiré is a major problem when shooting in front of large led screens. Keep up the good work on the pod casts, LOVE THEM :)

I got A1. I was using A7R series before, starting from R I all up to A7R IV. The A1 is perfect due to it's ALL in one features. A1 II with global shutter 8K 60P and same Dynamic Range, is way more enough for me to upgrade! Camera is awesome. and I can't wait for a March huge firmware update. Hopefully they can finnally add Webcam mode, so I can use bloody $6500 camera, to connect my Xperia as an External Monitor, what Sony officially advertises, but I can't do it, cause I paid the most for the camera!!!!

I currently have both R5 and A1 and looking to sell A1 when R5 II is released BUT in order for that to happen it’s going to need the following: - Similar screen to the A9 III - Dual CF B slots (a boy can dream) - Full size HMDI (now I’m just crazy) - Variable Shutter - Oh and a stacked sensor If Canon fails me I will not be buying the R5 II and keep my Sony A1. Hey Sony! BTW where’s the new firmware update?

We need pre-capture on the A1

Once you go 50mp it's really hard going back. The only con is the file size. I love my A1.

I have the A1 and will be waiting on the A1 II

I watched a bird photographer with the A9III, the FPS was insane. Now for years I’ve said if you can’t get a great shot with a 10FPS camera then go home. But this has changed my mind, this guy was getting so many open wing options it was unreal.