Japanese technology company Sony Corporation on Monday expanded its wildlife and sports photography portfolio by launching a new full-frame mirrorless interchangeable lens camera, called the ‘Alpha 9 (model ILCE-9)’ in the India market. Priced at Rs. 3,29,990, the new Sony α9 will be made available for purchase starting July 29, 2017, via all Sony Center, Alpha flagship stores as well as all leading electronics stores across the country. Besides this, the company has also introduced three new lenses namely SEL1224G (FE 12-24mm G Series), SEL1635GM (FE 16–35 mm G Master) and SEL100400GM (100–400 mm G Master) in India. As for pricing, the new SEL1224G 12-24mm F4 G ultra-wide angle zoom lens has been launched in India with a price tag of Rs.1,39,990 and is now already made available in the market. On the other side, the SEL1635GM 16-35mm G Master wide-angle zoom lens is priced at Rs.1,79,990, while for the Sony SEL100400GM G Master 100-400mm super telephoto zoom lens, you have to pay Rs.1,99,990. Note that, the SEL1635GM and SEL100400GM models will be made available for purchase starting July 24 via all Sony Center as well as all leading electronics stores across the country.
Sony α9 Specifications:
First unveiled globally back in April, the Sony α9 comes equipped with a new 35mm full-frame stacked 24.2-megapixel Exmor RS CMOS sensor, which enables data processing speeds at up to 20x faster than the company’s previous full-frame mirrorless camera models. The CMOS sensor comes combined with an upgraded BIONZ X processing engine and front-end LSI for high-speed response and improved continuous shooting performance. The full frame stacked CMOS is designed to offer high ISO results and is also capable of shooting at a high number of fps (frame per second).
The new Sony α9 camera offers various capabilities like blackout-free continuous shooting at up to 20 frames per second, 60 AF/AE tracking calculations per second for up to 362 JPEG or 241 RAW images and a maximum electronic shutter speed of up to 1/32,000 second. The new electronic shutter operates silently without any mechanical noise to prevent disruptions when shooting wildlife, sports, or events in a quiet environment. The Sony α9 comes with 5-Axis shake-reduction system built into the body. This feature is the five-axis image stabilisation system which helps in capturing the best scenes and subjects even during pitch and yaw, horizontal and vertical shift, and roll by as much as 5.0 shutter steps.
The another highlighted feature in this camera is its top light sensitivity technology. The Sony α9 has a very high sensitivity range of the image sensor which goes all the way up to ISO 204,800, which should make it possible to capture images in next to no light without generating annoying noise. The standard ISO range is ISO 100-51200. The Sony α9 features a highly impressive autofocus system with 693 focal plane phase detection AF points that cover approx. 93 percent of the image area. The fast hybrid AF system has a 25 percent faster performance when compared to Sony α7R II. Apart from this, the Sony α9 is also capable of shooting videos in 4K UHD (3840 × 2160) resolution at 30fps and full HD (1920 x 1080) resolution videos at 120fps at a bit rate of up to 100mbps.
On the back, the new Sony mirrorless camera sports a tilt-adjustable 3-inch LCD touchscreen display with 14,40,000 dots resolution. By the versatile tilt mechanism, a user can easily position at any desired angle for effortless shooting in high and low angle photography. Apart from this, the display offers a clear, real-time preview with 100% field coverage for focusing, framing, and reviewing shots. The Sony α9 has a 1.3 cm Quad-VGA OLED colour Viewfinder with approximately 3,686k dots. The camera’s rugged exterior is designed to be dust and weather proof. The camera has a weather-sealed magnesium alloy body which means light rain or extreme temperatures will not harm the camera.
Connectivity options offered by the camera include built-in Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n/, Bluetooth 4.1 Low Energy, NFC, and a micro HDMI port. The camera has dual slots for convenient data management, one for SD cards and one for SD/Memory Stick cards. Lower card slot supporting UHS-II type cards. The same still or movie data can simultaneously be recorded to both cards, or the user can choose to separate RAW / JPEG or still images/movies. Data can also be transferred between two cards. For easy transfer of files, there is also an Ethernet port (wired LAN terminal) that lets users use FTP server for transferring large files. The new Sony α9 camera also supports uncompressed 14-bit RAW format. On the battery front, the new mirrorless digital camera is fuelled by an all-new Sony NP-FZ100 battery that is rated to offer 2.2x more battery life than the previous Sony full-frame models.
