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First Impressions with Sony A9
Fresh out of the box, my first impressions:
- It could be mistaken for an A7R II (or A7 II) at first glance; size and weight and shape are identical at a glance.
- Hooray! There is finally a menu. Hopefully Sony will backport this feature to the A7R II.
- The 4-way controller is a big step up from the clumsy ergonomics of the A7 series in two key ways: (1) selecting the focus point (massively better) and (b) scrolling in already-shot images.
- Caution in that is enabled out of the box—don’t shoot your first images to /dev/null.
- Caution in that is off out of the box—battery power will be wasted. Set to enabled to minimize battery use.
- There is a powered and charged by external battery. option, so it looks like the camera can be
- The camera remains too small for my hands, at least for its intended purposes. When I think of sports shooters used to CaNikon, part of the functionality is a size that works in the hands. I am not at all persuaded the small size of the A9 is a good thing. For starters, it forces nearly all the buttons to the right side, which makes two-handed operational control difficult.
- The grip is a bit too shallow for my hands, not something I could hold with comfort for periods of sports shooting.
- The 4-way controller is a welcome addition that I look forward to using for image review and focus point control.
- The battery is physically much larger than the A7 series batteries, and comes with a Nikon/Canon-sized charger. Sony deserves kudos for a small but useful innovation: the charger has 3 charge-level bars, a nice upgrade from having to interpret blinking dots or such.
- The card slot door now locks; a small slider switch must be released, which flips it open. This appears more to be an issue of making it easier to open than of locking per se, since the door is narrower with nothing to grip as on the A7R II.
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