Sony a1 II initial review: is Sony’s flagship camera another game changer?

Sample gallery

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The Sony Alpha 1 II is the company’s latest flagship full-frame mirrorless camera. It’s built around the same 50.1MP stacked CMOS sensor as the original but now includes an “AI processing unit,” which allows its autofocus system to recognize seven different subject types and to automatically select one based on what’s in the scene.

Key specifications

• 50.1MP stacked CMOS sensor
• In-body stabilization rated at up to 8.5EV
• Improved autofocus subject recognition with automatic selection
• Continuous shooting at up to 30fps with full AF tracking
• Pre-release capture from 0.03 to 1 second
• Fully-articulated rear screen on tilt-out cradle
• 8K 30p video downsampled from 8.6K / 4K 120fps
• 9.44M dot 240fps viewfinder – full res up to 120fps

The a1 II will retail for $6,499.99 – the same as its predecessor – and will be available in mid-December.

Index:

• What’s new?
• How it compares
• Body and handling
• Initial impressions
• Sample Gallery
• Specifications
• Press release

What’s new

Despite using the same sensor as its predecessor, Sony claims the a1 II will have improved image quality at mid-to-high ISOs thanks to its improved image processing engine. Presumably, these improvements will only appear in the JPEGs.

Improved Autofocus

The original a1’s autofocus system could recognize humans when shooting stills and videos, and animals and birds when shooting stills. The a1 II, however, inherits the dedicated “AI processor” seen in cameras like the a7R V and a9 III and can now recognize even more subjects: it adds insects, cars, trains and airplanes. All the recognition modes are now available in movie mode as well, and the system can specifically target key parts of recognized subjects, such as a driver’s helmet.

The a1 II brings an ‘Auto’ subject recognition mode to the Alpha line

Sony also claims that human and animal eye recognition should be around 30% better than the a1 and that bird eye recognition should be 50% better. The Animal and Bird modes have also been merged, meaning you won’t have to switch between subject recognition modes if you want to go from shooting animals to birds or vice versa.

The a1 II’s Auto Subject Detection mode lets you narrow-down the types of subject it’ll search for, to help optimize the performance.

Not that you would necessarily have to switch modes manually. The a1 II is Sony’s first Alpha camera to have an Auto subject recognition mode, where it can determine what type of subject it should be tracking and lock on to it. As with the similar system on Nikon’s cameras, this comes with a small speed penalty compared to having a specific subject recognition mode selected. However, it can be useful if you need to quickly go between shooting a variety of subject types.

You can also speed up the system by limiting which types of subjects the Auto mode selects between; for example, you can make it so it only looks for humans, animals, and birds if you’re not planning to shoot any insects or vehicles.

Finally, Sony’s also adding extra small and extra large spot focus area options.

Pre-Capture

One feature that’s become commonplace since the launch of the a1 is pre-capture – a way for the camera to save the moments before you press the shutter, helping you capture key moments beyond your ability to anticipate them. The a1 II adds it, recording up to 30 frames in the moments leading up to you pressing the shutter button, though if you want to go above 20fps, you will be limited to using lossy compressed Raws instead of lossless compressed ones. When enabled, the pre-capture is activated by a half-press of the shutter, the press of the AF button, or both, depending on your settings.

You can set the pre-record window to be as short as 0.03 seconds or as long as a second, with several options in between.

Better stabilization

The a1 II’s internal image stabilization is now rated for up to 8.5 stops in the center of the frame and 7 stops on the periphery (a new CIPA metric), up from a 5.5 stop rating on the a1.

Viewfinder tweaks

Hardware-wise, the a1 II’s EVF seems largely unchanged from the a1’s: it’s the same resolution and can run at the same 240fps. However, Sony says you can now run in 120fps mode with display quality set to ‘high,’ though you will still see a drop in resolution if you go up to 240fps.

There’s also now a ‘deep’ viewfinder eyecup included in the box, alongside the standard one

Video

The a1 II retains most of the original’s video specs. This means 8K capture at up to 30p, full-width 4K capture at up to 60p and up to 120p with a 1.13x crop. The 4K isn’t derived from the 8K footage, though, so you don’t gain the detail benefit of 2x oversampling.

The a1 II adds a few quality-of-life updates, though. The most impactful will probably be the aforementioned support for using all the subject tracking modes while shooting video, but you can also now import up to 16 custom LUTs that you can use to preview what your Log footage will look like when graded. You can also embed the LUT alongside your files, so that someone else editing your footage can match your intended look.

Just as we’ve seen with Sony’s other recent large-sensor cameras, the a1 II only shoots the S-Log3 profile, which captures a very wide dynamic range. It no longer offers the less expansive S-Log2 option. The a1 II also gains the attractive and flexible S-Cinetone profile if you don’t want to color grade in post.

The camera also has the Auto Framing feature found on some of Sony’s vlogging cameras, where it will crop in on the subject and move the frame around to make it seem like there’s a cameraperson tracking them. There’s also a ‘Dynamic active’ image stabilization mode, which Sony says will increase the stabilization by up to 20% compared to the standard ‘Active’ mode, and a ‘Framing Stabilizer’ mode that’s meant to ensure that your frame maintains the same composition as much as possible when shooting handheld.

Noise Reduction Composite Raw

Sony has expanded on the a1’s pixel shift multi-shot mode, adding a noise reduction mode that shoots between 4 and 32 Raw images that can be composited together using a desktop computer running the company’s Imaging Edge software. Sony pitches it as a mode for low-light portraiture.

It’s most easily understood as a multi-shot mode without the pixel-shift movement. Rather than trying to boost resolution it aligns and combines multiple images to boost the signal-to-noise ratio (ie: tonal quality) at each pixel position. As with pixel shift mode, it’ll work best when there’s little to no movement within your scene.

The a1 II also gains focus bracketing, which the original a1 lacked.

How it compares

The most direct competitor to the a1 II is Nikon’s Z9, its pro-focused high speed, high resolution model. Canon’s EOS R1 lower resolution makes it more of an a9 III competitor, but it’s these models primarily and explicitly made for professional shooting in the most demanding circumstances that Sony’s trying to target.

However, given how much of the Z9 and R1 Nikon and Canon have included in the Z8 and EOS R5 II, respectively, it’s also fair to include one of those models here, too. Sony doesn’t use the two-grip and larger battery design for its pro models, which makes the comparison even more inviting, despite them being a different class of camera.

The a1 II has the joint fastest shooting rate here and its sensor readout is quicker than the roughly 1/160 that the EOS R5 II can achieve. Likewise it has a built-in Ethernet connection, which the Canon lacks and, unlike the EOS R5 II and Nikon Z8, has matched card slots so that pros can focus on a single type of media and never have to worry about an performance difference between slots.

It’s much more evenly-matched against the Z9, which has a much lower resolution viewfinder but a low-latency readout path from its sensor to make the viewfinder more responsive. The Z9 can only shoot at up to 20fps in Raw, dropping to 12-bit readout and JPEG-only mode to hit 30fps.

Body and handling

Given that the a1’s audience is professionals who use it day in and day out, it’s no surprise that Sony has been conservative with changes to its magnesium body and controls – the a1 II’s tweaks are largely the same as the a9 III’s, with the grip getting deeper and the shutter button being angled forward towards your finger.

The dials and buttons are largely in the same places, though the exposure compensation markings have been removed from the locking top-plate control dial. The stills / video / S&Q modes have also been moved to a sub-dial rather than being settings on the mode selector dial, and the drive select dial now has a disable setting that lets you control the camera’s drive mode purely through menus.

The a1 II also features an additional programmable button on the front next to the grip. By default, it acts as a ‘Speed Boost’ button, upping your shooting rate as you hold it down. For example, you could be shooting at 15fps and press the button to start shooting at 30fps for a few seconds when the action speeds up or when you want to be sure you’ll capture a specific moment. This option can be moved to another button and the boosted frame-rate can be tailored to suit your subject.

The biggest physical change is the display. It’s a bit larger and higher resolution than the a1’s, and it can now tilt in addition to being fully articulated. It’s a design we saw with the a7RV, and one that should make both photographers and videographers happy. It also has the slightly updated menu system from the a7RV as well, with the interactive settings tab.

As discussed above, the viewfinder is largely still the same, with a large 0.9x magnification and 9.44M dots giving a resolution of 2048 x 1536px. Its 120fps mode is nicer to use now that it doesn’t come with a substantial drop in resolution.

Ports and slots

The a1 II’s I/O is largely unchanged from its predecessor, though the ports have moved around a bit. It still has a headphone and microphone jack, a USB-C port that runs at 3.2 Gen 2 10Gbps speeds, a full-size HDMI port, Sony’s micro USB ‘Multi’ accessory port, and a flash sync port.

It also has dual-band 2.4 and 5GHz Wi-Fi with 2×2 MIMO and an upgraded Ethernet port that runs at 2.5Gbps instead of the 1Gbps speeds the port on the a1 was limited to. That should make transferring large videos and batches of photos over long distances faster – try finding a high-speed USB-C cable that’s more than a few meters long – and is another sign of the pro workflows this camera is designed to support. The Ethernet port also now has a Wake on LAN feture that can be used to remotely turn the a1 II on using Remote Camera Tool.

On the other side, the a1 II features a pair of the combined CFexpress Type A / UHS-II SD card slots for storage that feature on many of Sony’s cameras.

Battery

The a1 II uses Sony’s NP-FZ100 batteries, and includes a dual-battery charger in the box, which it claims will charge two batteries at once in around 155 minutes.

The camera is rated to give 420 shots per charge when using the rear screen. As always, CIPA figures tend to significantly underestimate the actual number of shots most people will get, and this discrepancy gets significantly larger when you’re shooting bursts. But, while we’d expect a camera rated at 420 shots per charge to actually be able to shoot multiple times this number in practice, it’s usually a good indicator of how its battery life compares with other cameras (ie: if it gets a rating 50% lower than another camera, it’s likely to capture around 50% fewer shots per charge).

Initial impressions

By Richard Butler

The a1 II’s AF proved very effective at staying focused on the player we’d specified, in our testing so far. Sony FE 400mm F2.8 GM OSS | F2.8 | 1/4000 sec | ISO 640 Photo: Richard Butler

When the original a1 arrived, just shy of four years ago, it represented an unprecedented combination of high resolution and speed. Despite a 50MP sensor, its Stacked CMOS design with on-board RAM let it capture stills at up to 30fps with readout speeds of around 4ms (fast enough to allow flash sync at up to 1/200 sec). This was around four times faster readout than the 20fps Canon EOS R5, which had previously come closest to offering high-speed and high res.

However, in the time that’s passed, both Canon and Nikon have produced fast high-res bodies and done so at something closer to a consumer-reachable price, leaving Sony’s pro flagship looking expensive, rather than exemplary. Don’t let this or Sony’s single-grip approach fool you: the a1 II is designed to square-up against the Z9 and R1, not the Z8 and R5 II. But it goes to show how quickly things have been moving that these more affordable models can match so much of the of the original a1’s spec and offer more advanced subject recognition.

A pro sports camera doesn’t have to be used solely for sports, and its impressive autofocus can help maintain a very high hit-rate even when scrutinizing all 50 million pixels. Sony 28-70mm F2 GM @ 70mm | F8 | 1/200 sec | ISO 100

The a1 II helps redress this balance, somewhat, pairing the same processing capabilities as Sony’s other pro-focussed model, the a9 III, with the 50MP Stacked CMOS sensor. This includes the gain of subject recognition AF modes with the first ‘Auto’ option that lets you pare back the range of subjects it hunts for, to hit an optimal speed/convenience balance for your photography. We’ve been very impressed by the camera’s AF performance so far.

The a1 II also gains the pre-capture option that’s been becoming increasingly common on action-focused cameras. It still tops-out at 8K/30 on the video side though, and has no option for 4K derived from this 8K capture, leaving it behind both the R5 II and Z8 in this regard.

Interestingly, the a1 II still needs to drop to Sony’s damagingly lossy Raw format at 30 fps: it can only shoot lossless compressed Raw at 20fps. The difference only becomes apparent at high-contrast edges after significant editing pushes, so is unlikely to be a major issue for action shooting, but it’s a surprise that this couldn’t be addressed with the Mark II’s greater processing grunt.

“It’s these workflow features aimed at professionals that try to set the camera apart”

Critically, the a1 II also includes a series of features from both the a1 and the a9 III designed specifically for professionals trying to deliver images quickly that the less expensive rivals lack. This includes a variety of transfer options, including SFTP and several ways of marking files to be transferred. We’d also expect the a1 II to gain the ability to encode C2PA authentication metadata to its files.

Unsurprisingly, it’s the cumulative impact of these workflow features aimed at professionals working in high-intensity environments that try to set the camera apart. And if you’re not one of those people (and most of us aren’t), then the a1 II almost certainly isn’t worth so much more than the more consumer-priced models.

Details such as a high-speed Ethernet port and options like Start-on-LAN to enable a goal-line camera to be remotely activated and controlled are what help set the pro-tier products apart from the very high-end enthusiast/crossover models.

But how can these small details, an Ethernet port, that huge, high-res viewfinder and details like matched media card slots really add up to justify a 50% premium over the enthusiast/pro crossover bodies, such as the Z8 and EOS R5 II? Ultimately, it may simply be a ‘Pro Tax’: that $6K is how much a pro-focused camera costs. It’s the amount the market has shown it will bear, and it’s likely to be how much companies (including single-photographer companies) will have budgeted.

If there’s any doubt in your mind about whether the a1 II is worth the extra $2000 over the Z8 or EOS R5 II, then you’re not its target audience, and consequently it almost certainly isn’t, But if you are a Sony-shooting pro, the a1 II adds significantly to the skill-set of the previous model. But against dramatically improved competition and with so much Z9 and R1 tech trickling down to the Z8 and R5 II, it’s not the game-changer its predecessor was. We’ll get a chance to test this assessment as we continue using the camera.

Sample gallery

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