Sony a1 vs Nikon Z9

One of the great frustrations of owning a camera is that the different mounts aren’t compatible. You can’t simply buy the best camera body and the best lenses because they might not fit together!

However, you might be able to get a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card if you’re considering switching from a DSLR to a mirrorless camera. Here’s a guide to your best strategy.

Adapt or Die?

If you’re buying a mirrorless camera but want to keep your existing glass and stay within the ‘walled garden’ of Nikon or Canon, that means using an adapter. Unfortunately, that’s not ideal if you’re serious about your photography.

Having to fit an adapter every time is inconvenient, and it adds to the size and weight of your camera kit. It might also compromise the functionality of your equipment. The new Nikon FTZ II adapter, for instance, is incompatible with some lenses, can’t provide autofocus with AF lenses and doesn’t have a tripod mount socket.

You also miss out on all the benefits of using native lenses that have been specifically designed for mirrorless cameras. These tend to be much smaller and lighter than lenses made for DSLRs, and because they’re generally newer, they boast the latest features.

Anyway, if you decide to take the plunge and break free of the Canon or Nikon ecosystem (as I did when I traded in all my Nikon gear for a Sony system), these are the three best mirrorless cameras currently on the market.

Sony a1

Sensor: 50MP full-frame BSI-CMOS sensor
Raw frame rate: 30 fps (lossy compressed)
ISO 100 - 32000 (expands to 50-102400)
Eye tracking: Yes (human, animal and bird)
Video: 8K 7680 x 4320 pixels
Battery life: 530 shots
Weight: 0.7 kg (1 lb 10 oz)
DxO scores: 98 overall, 25.9 colour depth, 14.5 dynamic range and 3163 low light ISO

Pros

• Best autofocus on the planet

• Highest available Raw frame rate

• Largest sensor in a DSLR (apart from the A7R series and medium format cameras)

• Highly customisable, with three presets on the main dial

Cons

• Can’t identify subject as human, animal or bird (yet!)

• Small grip not ideal for large hands and may leave blisters

• No oversampled 4K video

• Very expensive!

My last blog post was an in-depth comparison of the Sony a1 and the Nikon D850, but here’s a recap of the main features.

Body and Handling

Mirrorless cameras and lenses tend to be smaller and lighter, and the a1 is no exception. My 400mm and 600mm lenses are also light enough for me to shoot handheld, which is a nice change after using the impossibly heavy Nikon 800mm lens for so long!

The Sony a1 doesn’t have a built-in vertical grip, but I like the flexibility of being able to fit mine as an optional extra. Holding a 600mm lens is a bit tough for long periods, so I’ll take any weight advantage I can get! The only downside of not fitting the battery grip is that the a1 is a bit too small for my hands, and when I spent three weeks in Botswana recently, I did end up getting blisters on several fingers.

The other big advantage of the a1 is the opportunity for customisation. There are five named custom buttons (C1-5), but there are actually 13 buttons in total that you can customise, with different settings possible for stills, video or playback. This is great for one-touch access to functions such as focus area, white balance, eye detection and silent shooting, and I use all mine on a regular basis.

The other custom options are the exposure presets on the main dial. They are absolutely crucial to the speed of my workflow. When I get a wildlife sighting on a game drive, it might only last for a few seconds, so the ability to switch seamlessly from portrait to action or slow pan mode by turning one dial is a godsend.

Admittedly, the main dial does need to be unlocked by pressing the button on top, which makes it harder than it should be when you have your eye to the viewfinder. However, the ability to save almost every single setting in those presets is a real time-saver.

The electronic viewfinder on a mirrorless camera has historically been a drawback, with viewfinder lag and blackouts a real problem. However, Sony has managed to solve those problems convincingly with the a1’s unbelievably bright and clear 0.9x 9437k-dot EVF. You get blackout-free shooting with no noticeable lag at all.

The first time I used it, I was a bit disappointed that the view looked a bit ‘digital’, but that’s only because I thought I was still using an optical viewfinder! Unless you zoom in all the way, it’s almost impossible to tell them apart. The added advantage of the EVF is that you get a WYSIWYG view of what your shot will actually look like, which makes it much easier to use exposure compensation, for instance. You also get features like focus assist and zebra stripes that simply aren’t possible on a DSLR.

Finally, there’s one small problem I’ve found with the naming and playback of files. I can set one storage slot to ‘overflow’, but I can’t number or play back the images sequentially from both slots. The numbering only goes up to 1,000 even though there are five digits available for the sequence number, which should be enough for 99,999 images. If I try to import the files to my MacBook Pro using Image Capture, I constantly get warnings about duplicate filenames. It’s easier if I use Lightroom, but then I end up with lots of filenames ending in ‘ 2’ or ‘ 3’!

The problem extends to image playback, and it sometimes seems as if images have simply ‘disappeared’ simply because they’re on the other memory card. This is ludicrous, and any Sony engineer who’d actually used the a1 for any length of time should’ve spotted the issue and sorted it out. However, it’s still there, and all I can do is wait for the next firmware update…!

Optics

Even now, I’m still amazed by the sharpness of the images I get with the a1. Admittedly, I did get a few soft results early on, but I quickly learned that was down to using a teleconverter. Yes, the 2.0x TC conveniently turns my 70-200mm lens into the 140-400mm equivalent of my old 80-400mm Nikon workhorse. However, it comes at the price of two stops of light, and the autofocus becomes much slower and less reliable. I learned my lesson after my Botswana trip in May. When I went back in October I hardly ever used a teleconverter, and I was very happy with the results.

My only slight complaint now is that the background in my images looks a little bit ‘odd’. It’s almost as if I’m getting digital artifacts from oversharpening. It doesn’t happen very often, and I can always fix it in post by reducing the texture slider in Lightroom, but it’s a bit annoying. Otherwise, the images are as sharp as I could possibly want, and the combination of putting my 400mm lens on one camera and my 600mm lens on the other works very well.

Autofocus

Sony has been making full-frame mirrorless cameras for longer than anyone else, and it shows when it comes to their autofocus systems. The a1 offers human, animal and bird eye detection and tracking in different focus areas, and it really works!

This is a real boon to any portrait, wildlife or sports photographer because getting the eye sharp is so important. The a1’s autofocus comes with tracking as well as eye detection, but it’s ‘smart’ enough to know that the eye takes priority, so it will follow the eye and keep it in focus even if it leaves the selected focus area.

Focus areas are the mirrorless equivalent of focus points. You simply choose the area you want the camera to search for an eye (or another subject) and then let the autofocus system do its job. If you have an open field of view, then Wide (or full-frame) mode works fine, but you may need to switch to Zone or Expanded Spot if there are too many leaves or branches in the way.

The advantage of Expanded Spot is that the camera uses the focus points around the central one just in case it misses focus for a moment. That means you’re less likely to get a soft image in amongst all the sharp ones.

In practice, I’ve found I use Zone and Expanded Spot the most, so I’ve now limited the available focus areas to those two. There’s a tracking option available for each focus area, but that would slow my frame rate down to 20 fps, so I simply activate focus and tracking by pressing the AF-ON button. I’ve checked the results, and I can still get 30 fps.

Customisation plays a key role here. I’m constantly switching between focus areas and eye detection modes, so I’ve set up two custom buttons near the shutter release that I can use to toggle between all the different options. That’s obviously way more convenient than having to search through the menus, and it saves me a lot of time.

The only problem I currently have with the autofocus is that I have to select the type of subject manually. That’s a bit of a pain, and it’s especially frustrating because there’s no icon in the EVF to tell me whether I’m in Human, Animal or Bird mode.

The good news is that the new Sony a7R V lets you tell the camera to work it out for itself, so I look forward to Sony retrofitting that feature on the a1 in a future firmware update!

Video

I generally shoot video on my iPhone 12 Pro Max, which is capable of 4K footage. I’ve only used my Sony a1 once. I was in Kenya filming a leopard yawning, but when I downloaded all my images on to my laptop after my game drive, the clip had disappeared! It turned out that the a1 puts video files and image files in different places on the memory card. Very annoying…

Anyway, the a1 does offer 8K video in various formats, including XAVC S, XAVC HS, H.264 and H.265. However, 8K resolution is too high to display properly on just about any monitor these days, so it’s a bit pointless using it. If you drop down to 4K, though, the a1’s footage isn’t oversampled. That means that it’s a lot less sharp and detailed than what’s available on the Z9 (or R5).

However, the a1 does have gyroscopic stabilization (unlike the Z9 or R5), and there’s no recording limit. You also get convenient headphone and microphone ports.

Features

The a1 comes with just about all the features of my old D850 plus a few more of its own. However, it’s worth looking at the small print. I mentioned before that Sony doesn’t seem to know the word ‘trade-off’, but trade-offs are there if you look hard enough:

• The maximum Raw frame rate of 30 fps can only be achieved using a supported lens in lossy compressed format, and there are a few other conditions.

• The resolution of the EVF falls from 2048 x 1536 to 1600 x 1200 if you choose the highest refresh rate of 240 fps.

• 4K/120p video comes with a slight crop.

• Pixel Shift High-Res Mode for 199MP images doesn’t work with AF-C and requires desktop software to combine the images.

Having said all that, the a1 still offers a tremendous list of features:

• Wireless and Bluetooth connections

• Tilting 3.2” LCD touchscreen

• External flash shoe

• Raw support

• Face detection

• Mic and headphone ports

• Weather sealing

• AE bracketing

• Flash sync port

• 2 x storage slots that accept UHS-II SD cards

• Smartphone remote control

• EV -4 minimum focus sensitivity

• Anti-flicker mode (for indoor shooting in fluorescent light)

• Frame rate (30 fps)

• Viewfinder magnification (0.9x)

• Sensor resolution (50MP)

• Maximum ISO (32000)

• Focus points (759)

• Weight (737g)

• Low light ISO (3163)

• Maximum video resolution (7680 x 4320)

• Shutter life expectancy (500k cycles)

• Gyroscopic stabilization

• In-Built Image Stabilization (IBIS)

• Stacked sensor

• Blackout-free shooting

• Unlimited video recording

• Anti-dust shutter mechanism

• Full-size HDMI port

• Pixel Shift High-Res Mode

• Human, animal and bird eye detection

• Eye tracking

• Webcam functionality

Nikon Z9

Sensor: 46MP full-frame CMOS sensor
Raw frame rate: 20 fps
ISO 64 - 25600 ( expands to 32 - 102400)
Eye tracking: Yes (human, animal and bird)
Video: 8K 7680 x 4320 pixels
Battery life: 740 shots
Weight: 1.34 kg (2 lb 15 oz)
DxO scores: 98 overall, 26.3 colour depth, 14.8 dynamic range and 2451 low light ISO

Pros

• AF system can distinguish between humans, animals, birds and vehicles

• Highest available Raw frame rate

• Largest sensor in a DSLR (apart from the A7R series and medium format cameras)

• Highly customisable, with three presets on the main dial

Cons

• Bulky and heavy

• Frame rate doesn’t match the Sony a1 or Canon R3

• Excellent video features

• Expensive!

The Z9 is Nikon’s flagship mirrorless camera and chief competitor to the Sony a1. It doesn’t quite match the a1’s frame rate, and it’s much heavier and bulkier, but its video performance is second to none (if you like that kind of thing!).

Body and Handling

The first thing to say about the Z9 is that it’s big—really big! That’s partly due to the built-in battery grip, which might be appealing to some photographers. However, the downside is that it weighs almost twice as much as the Sony a1—and you can’t remove the grip if you don’t need it.

The Z9 has an angular design that harks back to DSLRs like the D5 and D6, and the buttons are backlit just like the ones on those models. You also get an AF mode button on the lower left front of the body, just like on many Nikon DSLRs. It’s not terribly convenient, but at least it’s consistent! One thing that has changed is the positioning of the playback button, which has been moved from the top left to lower right.

The speed of the camera’s operations is supported by the two slots for CFexpress Type B cards. These are far superior to the Type A cards you need to use with the a1, so that’s a big advantage for Nikon. The slots are also backwards compatible with the old XQD cards, which is handy if you bought one for the D850—as I did!

The 3686k-dot viewfinder isn’t a patch on the a1’s, and even the recent firmware update has only increased the refresh rate to 120 fps. That’s only half the rate of the a1’s EVF. Having said that, though, there’s very little viewfinder lag, which matches Nikon’s intention to make this the ideal camera for capturing wildlife and sports action.

The rear LCD is not fully articulating, but the design at least lets you frame your shots in both portrait and landscape formats. The screen also stays centred over the axis of the lens, which avoids any parallax errors. It has 45% more dots than the one on the a1, which only tilts up and down on one axis.

The Z9 doesn’t have a mechanical shutter, but it does have a sensor shield that flips over the sensor when you swap lenses. This is handy to reduce the chances of getting sensor spots from dust in the air.

The EN-EL18d batteries are large and powerful. They provide 700 shots per charge if you use the EVF or 740 with the rear LCD. The figures jump to 740 and 770 if you use the energy-saving mode. However, the CIPA tests are unreliable with mirrorless cameras as they assume a lot of playback and single-shot usage. In practice, these numbers will probably be a lot higher—just as they are with my a1 bodies.

Optics

The Z9 provides better detail than the old Z7 II, but at the cost of slightly higher noise levels at high ISOs—which fails to match the Sony a1. JPEG colours are good, though, with warm skin tones, true yellows and pinks that are closer to orange than magenta.

The dynamic range is slightly less than on either the Z7 II or the a1, but it’s not a major difference. You can also benefit from the low base ISO setting of 64 rather than 100. The sensor has a dual gain design (like the one in the a1), so there’s actually a second base ISO setting of 500 ISO. This means using a ISO higher than 500 doesn’t improve image quality, so you could actually just keep it set at 500 ISO if you wanted to and brighten the image in post.

However, even though that should work in theory, it doesn’t necessarily work in practice. Editing software such as Lightroom doesn’t cope well with trying to brighten an image by more than three stops. That means your best strategy is to expose as normal and just watch out for clipping your highlights by exposing to the left if necessary.

Autofocus

The autofocus system can be initiated using either the viewfinder or the LCD screen. You can either put the AF box on your subject and press the AF-ON button to track it, or you can tap the rear screen to select your subject.

As well as tracking, you get subject recognition and face and eye detection—just as you do with the a1. The AF system is relatively easy to use with only two parameters that need setting:

• Blocked shot AF response tells the camera how long to wait before switching subjects.

• Subject motion tells the camera if the subject is moving erratically or at a consistent pace.

In comparison to the D6, you get the same autofocus modes, but they extend across the whole sensor. Focus acquisition is also 40-115% faster than it is on the D6 using the viewfinder, depending on whether you use 20 fps or 30 fps.

I used to use the 3D mode on my old D850, and it’s still the best one for moving subjects. It’s also cleverly integrated with face detection, which means the camera will automatically focus on the face nearest to your chosen 3D tracking focus point. It will then lock on to that face, even if the person turns away and/or other faces are in shot.

Finally, the Z9 beats the a1 in one respect: you can set it up so that the camera works out if the subject is a human, animal or bird. That means you don’t have to toggle constantly between the various options. I’ve been caught out many a time using my a1, and it’s very frustrating. The new A7R V has updated software with built-in subject recognition, so I just hope Sony releases a firmware update soon to do the same for the a1.

Video

This is the one area where the Z9 beats the a1. Both are capable of 8K footage, but the Z9 can shoot in 4K/60p, and the autofocus is probably a bit better—although it does still make mistakes.

You also get a lot of control over which settings are carried over from stills photography and which remain separate. That gives you the convenience of custom settings for video without having to change them every time you switch back to stills.

There’s a whole host of formats to suit every preference:

• 8-bit footage in either MP4 or MOV wrappers is good if you stick to the standard profiles and don't grade the footage much.

• N-Log capture gives you flexibility when grading, and have two options:

  • H.265 creates small files and lets you shoot HLG footage for playback on HDR TVs, but it’s hard for most computers to edit.

  • ProRes 422 HQ produces enormous files but is easy to edit on the computer.

• 10-bit Log footage can be captured internally, which means you don’t need an external recorder. You can view a corrected preview if you shoot Log, but you can't use your own Look-Up Tables (LUTs) if you want to see what the grading will look like.

• Internal raw video capture is available in two additional options

  • Nikon’s N-Raw format is the only way to record full-resolution 8.3K raw video at up to 60p and is supported by DaVinci Resolve and Edius.

  • ProRes RAW video in 4.1K up to 120p can be used with Final Cut Pro, Premiere or Avid.

Features

The Nikon Z9 and Sony a1 are both candidates for the top professional mirrorless camera on the market. They share a whole list of common features:

• Stacked sensor

• Zero blackout viewfinder

• Video record limit

• Wireless connection

• Bluetooth connection

• Image stabilisation

• Adjustable LCD screen

• External flash shoe

• Touch screen

• Viewfinder

• Raw support

• Face detection focus

• Max resolution

• Max continuous shooting

• Microphone port

• Headphone port

• Environmental sealing

• Timelapse recording

• AE Bracketing

• Full-size HDMI port

• Dual-axis electronic level

• Storage slot

• Smartphone remote

• CFexpress card support

• Webcam function

• Anti-flicker mode

• Eye tracking focus

The Z9 also scores over the a1 in a few areas:

• Pre-shooting buffer

• LCD Screen Size

• LCD resolution

• Battery life

• Colour depth

• Dynamic range

• Top LCD

• Focus bracketing

• Focus stacking

• Illuminated buttons

• IS Stop Effectivity

• Vehicle Tracking AF

However, the a1 beats the Z9 in a few, too:

• Gyroscopic stabilization

• Anti-dust shutter mechanism

• Viewfinder magnification

• Sensor resolution

• Max ISO

• Number of focus points

• Weight

• Viewfinder Resolution

• Low-light ISO

• Flash sync port

• Pixel Shift High-Res Mode

Verdict

The top mirrorless cameras at the moment are the Sony a1 (obvs!), the Nikon Z9 and the Canon R3 and R5—depending on whether you think resolution or frame rate is more important. I recommend them all, but the a1 just comes out on top due to its combination of resolution, frame rate, buffer size and autofocus system.

The Z9 is just too big for me, and the frame rate is a bit too low. That doesn’t mean, of course, that you can’t take great pictures with it (or with the Canon R3 or R5), but I’m in the Sony-verse now...

What do you get for the photographer who has everything?

A Sony a1…!

If you’d like to order a framed print of one of my wildlife photographs, please visit the Prints page.

If you’d like to book a lesson or order an online photography course, please visit my Lessons and Courses pages.