Sony’s new flagship Alpha 1 mirrorless camera seems like a dream come true for sports and wildlife photographers. With its 50.1MP full-frame stacked Exmor RS sensor, the Alpha 1 is capable of 30fps continuous shooting, and recording 8K video at 30fps. The big highlight is its ‘fast’ AF/ AE tracking. Sony says the autofocus and autoexposure system in the Alpha 1 can make up to 120 calculations per second, with the company taking forward strides in Eye AF technology.
The big new update is the fact that the Alpha 1 is the first Sony Alpha to have Eye AF that works on birds. Sony is making some tall claims too around the whole thing, claiming it can lock and hold on to it, “even if a sitting bird suddenly takes flight, or the framing suddenly changes.”
The Alpha 1 has five-axis, in-body image stabilisation and a standard ISO range of 100 to 32,000—this can go up to 50-102,400 for stills—and the ability to take up to 155 full-frame compressed RAW images or 165 full-frame JPEG images at up to 30fps with its ‘silent’ electronic shutter “while maintaining full AF and AE tracking performance.” Sony also says it has reduced rolling shutter and the Alpha 1 can match the shutter speed to flicker frequency under LED lighting.
As for videos, the Alpha 1 can record 10-bit 8K video at 30fps and 4K video at 120fps.
The Alpha 1 has an OLED quad-XGA electronic viewfinder with a 240Hz refresh rate, two expansion slots—for SD/SDHC (UHS-I/ II-compliant)/SDXC (UHS-I/ II-compliant)/CFexpress Type A—a USB Type-C (USB 3.2) port, a Micro-USB port, Bluetooth 5.0, dual-band Wi-Fi, 3.5mm mic, and LAN terminal. The Alpha 1 also has a microphone built in and a monaural speaker.
The full-frame mirrorless camera is rated to deliver up to 430 shots with the viewfinder (530 shots with the LCD display) and 145 minutes of video recording using the viewfinder (150 minutes with the LCD display) on a single charge.
Sony has launched the Alpha 1 in the US at a price of $6,500 with shipping to commence from early March. The Alpha 1 is currently listed as ‘available soon’ on Sony India website without actual pricing.
