The best of the best of the best…

I swapped my old Nikon D850 DSLR for a new Sony a1 mirrorless camera a couple of years ago, and I’ve never looked back!

Now that mirrorless cameras are wiping the floor with DSLRs—at least at the professional end!—let’s take a look at the three main contenders for the best mirrorless wildlife camera on the market: the Canon R3 (unless you prefer the R5’s higher resolution!), Nikon Z9 and Sony a1.

Features

I’ve covered what I think are the most important features from the point of view of a wildlife photographer who goes on safari quite a lot, ie me! If you don’t fit the profile, feel free to come to your own conclusions.

I have a pair of Sony a1 mirrorless cameras now, so I know them fairly well, and I’ve written extensively about the Canon R3 or Z9. However, I’ve never used those two cameras personally, so this will inevitably be a slightly biased comparison!

Price

The first thing to say is that the Sony a1 is by far the most expensive of the three cameras in the United Kingdom. However, you can now buy it for less than the Canon R3 in the United States.

None of these three models is cheap, though, and equipping yourself with good glass is going to add a few thousand to the bill!

And that’s all I have to say about that…

Sensor

There are different aspects to any camera sensor, but the first and most obvious one is the resolution. There are two trade-offs here, involving the frame rate and low-light performance.

Frame rate v resolution

In the past, the major camera manufacturers just didn’t have the technology to be able to produce a high-resolution sensor with a read-out speed fast enough for a frame rate of 20 or 30 fps. That’s changed now, and the Sony a1’s great strength is that it combines high resolution and the fastest RAW frame rate of 30 fps (in lossy compressed format).

The Z9 has a slightly lower resolution and can only manage 20 fps in RAW. You might think this isn’t a huge disadvantage, but you try photographing little bee-eaters at anything less than 30 fps!

Sadly, Canon has still not managed to avoid the trade-off, so you have to decide whether you want the high frame rate of the R3 or the high resolution of the R5. That’s pretty disappointing if you’re a Canon shooter, but I’m sure the R1 will solve that problem whenever it finally arrives.

Resolution v low-light performance

The other problem is low-light performance. The more pixels you try and squeeze on to a full-frame sensor, the smaller each one will be—and that means its light-gathering capability is compromised.

There’s no real way around this problem, so the R3 sensor with its lower resolution is the clear winner in low light (as measured by the DxO scores). The a1 does pretty well to beat the Z9 on resolution and low-light ISO, but it’s still well behind the R3.

Autofocus

Sony has historically held the lead in the capabilities of its mirrorless autofocus systems, but Canon and Nikon have arguably caught up. Based on various expert reviews and YouTube videos, there’s now very little to choose between the subject detection and eye detection of all three.

The R3’s advantage is its Eye Control AF feature, which lets you move the focus point by simply looking around the frame. It’s potentially game-changing, but it has to be calibrated first, and it doesn’t work for everyone.

From a personal point of view, I find it very annoying that I have to switch between human, animal and bird eye detection manually. I’ve set up a custom button to toggle between the different modes, but I’ve still lost count of the number of times I’ve screwed up a shot by accidentally being in the wrong one!

The other problem is that there’s no way to tell which mode you’re in while you’re looking through the EVF. That’s just as big a problem, and I hope the next firmware upgrade gives the a1 an automatic detection mode like the ones on the R3 and Z9. The a7R V already has it, so it surely must be on its way…

Frame Rate

This is one of the key features for a wildlife photographer, and I was desperate to max out my frame rate when I bought my first mirrorless camera. The Sony a1 can shoot at 30 fps, and that’s invaluable when shooting birds and other fast action.

I admit that it can only do it in lossy compressed mode, but I’ve shot thousands of frames in both lossy compressed and lossless compressed, and I honestly can’t tell the difference.

The R3 matches the a1’s frame rate, and a firmware update enables it to take 2-50 frames at 30-195 fps! However, that’s with the exposure and autofocus locked, so it’s not that useful.

The Z9’s RAW frame rate is only 20 fps, and there’s been no sign of any firmware update to improve that…!

Buffer

One of the areas where the a1 doesn’t score particularly highly is the buffer depth. You can’t take as many frames as you can with the R3, and the Z9 blows both cameras out of the water!

However, it’s important to bear in mind what actually happens when you reach the limit. With the Sony a1, it does slow down slightly, but it never actually stops. That means you can carry on shooting at a lower frame rate until the card ‘catches up’.

The one exception is when you don’t use a fast CFexpress Type A card. I’ve had to switch to SD cards as a last resort on a couple of occasions, and they’re glacial by comparison. In fact, I almost lost hundreds of images on a recent trip to Lake Kerkini when I tried to switch out my SD card before the camera had finished writing the files!

Shutter Speed

All these cameras can manage exceptionally fast shutter speeds, and there won’t be many occasions when you have to shoot at 1/32000 or 1/64000 of a second. However, it happens more often than you might think.

The Nikon Z9 has been used to photograph a speeding bullet in flight at 1/32000, and I was forced to use 1/32000 on my trip to Greece. The problem was that I was shooting white birds on a lake on a bright, sunny day and trying to underexpose by three or four stops! That was just impossible when shooting wide open unless I pushed my shutter speed to the limit.

GPS

I know GPS doesn’t sound like it’s the most critical feature of a camera, but it’s so convenient to have it. If the R3, Z9 and even my iPhone can keep track of where they are in the world, why can’t my Sony a1?!

I can use the Imaging Edge app to copy GPS data from my smartphone, but it only works with one camera at a time. Very annoying…

Weight

The Sony a1 is much lighter than the R3 and the Z9 (which is a bit of a brick!), but that’s mostly because it doesn’t have an integrated grip. Personally, I prefer to choose when I want to fit the optional grip.

There are times when I want the convenience of being able to switch quickly from landscape to portrait and the security of longer battery life. However, there are also times when I’m very grateful to be able to take off the grip to make the camera lighter when I’m shooting handheld.

Battery Life

I have to say that the official CIPA figures for the battery life of mirrorless cameras are very misleading. Officially, I should only be able to take 430 shots on a single charge with my a1, but I’ve actually emptied three memory cards and taken over 7,000 photos!

The key point is that battery life improves dramatically if you shoot in burst mode. I don’t know exactly how CIPA does its testing, but it can’t possibly be shooting all those 430 frames in continuous mode.

All that means that there’s really no problem with the battery life of any of these cameras—despite the extra power drain of the EVF. I shoot at 30 fps all the time (unless I’m doing slow pans), and I don’t even need to carry a spare battery with me most of the time!

Verdict

The R3, Z9 and a1 are all very capable cameras, but I prefer the all-round package of the a1. It can do everything, and it does’t really have any weaknesses—apart from the rather annoying way you have to choose the autofocus mode!

Canon’s failure to produce a high-resolution camera with a high frame rate means you have to make an impossible choice between the 30 fps R3 and the 45MP R5.

The Z9 is let down by its 20 fps RAW frame rate and its sheer weight and size. If it had been available when I bought my first a1, it might’ve made the choice a bit harder, but I’m happy with my choice.

The a1 isn’t perfect. As I say, the fact it can’t detect whether the subject is human, animal or bird is pretty poor when it can do so much else, and it’s also fiddly to switch between the custom exposure modes. Having to press the unlock button and twist the main dial is far from easy when you’re trying to keep your eye to the viewfinder!

In terms of its performance as a tool for wildlife photographers, it’s served me very well. There’s a huge range of lenses to choose from, and I’m very happy with the weight and sharpness of my 400mm and 600mm primes.

In addition, the a1 has never ‘frozen’ and refused to take a picture (except when I accidentally knocked a button on the battery grip!), and the combination of high resolution, high frame rate and market-leading autofocus is unbeatable—if you can afford it!

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