Could do better…
Confusion of blue wildebeest hidden by dust
I’ve been using my pair of Sony ⍺1 cameras for a couple of years now, and I thought it would be worth doing a proper field test. I’ve just come back from a couple of weeks in the Serengeti photographing the Mara river crossing, so how did they perform?
The Basics
One of the reasons I bought the ⍺1s in the first place is that they are strong across the board. The words ‘trade-off’ and ‘compromise’ obviously weren’t thrown around very often in the Sony boardroom because there’s nothing these babies can’t do!
The specs speak for themselves:
Resolution: 50 MP
Raw frame rate: 30 fps
Autofocus: human, animal and bird eye detection and tracking
Maximum shutter speed: 1/32000 of a second
Customisation: an infinity of options!
Yes, it’s true that there should be a few asterisks after some of the features, such as the maximum Raw frame rate, which only reaches 30 fps if you select the lossy compressed format.
It’s also true that I bought my ⍺1s before the Z9 or Z8 came out, which might’ve been the more sensible choice given that I was a Nikon shooter. However, I still believe the ⍺1 is the best camera out there for wildlife photography.
What’s Missing
Having said that, there are still a few missing features that I’d like to see introduced—either as firmware updates or in the next version of the hardware.
Subject Selection
The Sony ⍺1 is supposed to have the world’s best autofocus system, so why on Earth do I have to tell it if my subject is a human, animal or bird?! Surely it should be able to work that out for itself!
The other problem is that the ⍺1 doesn’t actually display what subject selection mode it’s in, so you have to toggle through all the options to make sure you’re in the right one. That can be a real pain sometimes, and I’ve missed focus many times because I’ve accidentally been in the wrong mode.
The a7R V shows that Sony now knows how to do it properly, but, unfortunately, the rumour is that it’s the processor rather than the firmware that makes it possible, so I guess I’ll just have to put up with the issue until I buy a new camera…!
Pre-shot capture
This is an absolutely crucial feature that more and more manufacturers are offering. The idea is that the camera starts buffering frames as soon as you half-press the shutter. When you press it fully down, the most recent pictures are saved to the memory card (as well as the ones you take normally). Some cameras even save a few frames AFTER you lift your finger off the shutter button!
Many animals and birds move very quickly and unpredictably, so pre-shot capture would be hugely valuable to wildlife photographers. I spend a lot of time photographing little bee-eaters and lilac-breasted rollers taking off from dead branches, and it’s almost impossible to predict when they’ll actually do it. That means I have to keep tapping the shutter every half a second or so just in case…!
If the Sony ⍺1 were more like the OM System OM-1, I’d be able to get far more shots of birds just at the point of take-off as well as in flight.
Main Dial Lock Button
One of the good things about the Sony ⍺1 is that it’s very easy to customise. Perhaps the most useful option is the ability to save preset shooting modes to the three numbered settings on the main exposure dial.
You can save just about any information to each preset, including exposure mode, shutter speed, aperture, ISO and subject detection mode. That means it’s easy to switch between different presets to take different kinds of shots, such as portraits and slow pans.
In the bad, old days of owning my Nikon D810 and D850, it would take me so long to make that transition that the opportunity would usually disappear before I was ready. Even having two camera bodies didn’t help much because they obviously had lenses with different focal lengths.
The ⍺1 is a big improvement, then, but there’s still an issue with the main dial lock button. It’s totally unnecessary and positively annoying! I need to be able to switch between presets on the fly while keeping my eye to the EVF. It’s almost impossible to do that if I have to push down the lock button and then turn the dial!
It’s such an obvious problem that I don’t really understand how Sony ended up making such a mistake. Perhaps it was because people complained the main dial was slipping, leading them to use the wrong settings.
Anyway, I recently took matters into my own hands. I took both my cameras to Fixation in Vauxhall and asked the engineer to take out the lock buttons. He did so free of charge (taping over them so as not to leave a hole!), and now I’m much happier…
What Went Wrong
So, back to the field test. How have my ⍺1s actually performed in the field? Well, until my most recent trip, they’ve done very well. I haven’t had to repair any damage to either of them, and the only time one of them stopped working completely was when I accidentally knocked the lock button on the battery grip.
Failure to Launch
Unfortunately, that changed when I was in Tanzania. There were several times when one of my cameras just wouldn’t switch on, and I missed several shots as a result. I did get a warning about the battery on one occasion, so it might just have been a battery issue. In fact, that tallies with the fact that I couldn’t charge one of the batteries a few months ago. However, it was very worrying, whatever the cause.
Slipping Dials
Another problem I frequently had was that the drive mode and focus dials on the left-hand side of the top plate kept slipping. I always shoot in AF-C mode at the maximum burst rate of 30 fps, but too often I ended up by accident in a different drive mode or focus mode.
That was very frustrating as it was hard to tell what was going wrong and why. I love silent shooting, but when the only sign that you’ve taken a picture is the appearance of a grey rectangle in the EVF, it’s hard to see how many frames you’ve actually taken. It’s also hard to tell if you’ve accidentally switched from AF-C to AF-S.
These are crucial settings, and I’m surprised that I accidentally ended up in the wrong mode so often—especially as both dials had a lock button!
Error Messages
Another issue was the appearance of an error message to do with the lens. It said the lens wasn’t supported or wasn’t fitted properly. Now, that’s all very well, and I fixed it quite easily by refitting the lens, but that just shouldn’t happen with any lens mount.
Start-up Delay
The final issue was a delay in starting up the ⍺1. This appeared to be caused by the battery grip as I didn’t experience the problem when I was using the other camera body without the grip.
It wasn’t a major delay, but three or four seconds can seem like a lifetime if you’re desperate to take an important shot. I often talk about the ‘Two-Second Rule’, which simply says that you need to be able to take a wildlife photograph in two seconds before your subject turns away or does something different. Two seconds is often all you get, so a delay of anything more than that is a game-changer.
Verdict
So where does that leave us? I’m still happy with my Sony ⍺1 mirrorless cameras, but it seems the honeymoon period is over!
No camera is perfect, and technological advances make new features possible all the time, but it was disappointing to discover so many problems with what had been until recently a very reliable tool.
You have been warned…!
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