It won't be an exaggeration to say that the two giants in the professional camera field are the Sony A1 and the Nikon Z9. While the Sony A1 came to the market at the beginning of this year, the Nikon Z9 one is just a month old. Both of these high-priced, prestigious cameras shoot 8K, have a resolution of about 45-50MP, and click a minimum of 30fps bursts. These similar features make the task of choosing one over the other all the more difficult. To help you out, in this article we'll compare the Sony A1 and Nikon Z9 cameras in terms of their physical design, video quality, autofocus, ISO, sensor resolution, and burst shooting.
Sony A1 vs Nikon Z9 - Which One Should You Buy?
Physical Design
Photo Courtesy: www.dpreview.com
Photo Courtesy: www.dpreview.com
While the Sony A1 camera has a 1.44 million-dot screen that tilts vertically, the Nikon Z9 comes with a 1.04 million-dot horizontally as well as vertically tilting screen. None of the two cameras has a fully articulating LCD screen feature. If we talk about the EVF, having the smashing 9.44 million-dot, 240fps EVF the Sony A1 beats the Nikon Z9 that has the 3.69 million-dot 60fps EVF. The Nikon Z9 comes with AF buttons, control dials, and mirrored joysticks, just like any pro DSLR camera. And due to the pro DSLR style, the Nikon Z9 one is much bigger and heavier than the Sony A1 camera. It has the size and weight of 149 x 149.5 x 90.5mm and 1,160g respectively, whereas those of the latter are 128.9 x 96.9 x 80.8mm and 737g respectively.
Video Quality
Photo clicked by Sony A1
Photo Courtesy: www.dpreview.com
While both Sony A1 and Nikon Z9 can shoot 8K 30p videos, Nikon one leads this field, providing an 8K 60p recording facility. But you can avail of this feature only through a firmware update that will come in the market in 2022. If you compare the 8K 30p recording features of both the cameras, the Nikon Z9 would offer a far better experience than that of Sony A1. You can record up to 125 minutes of video with it, without any overheating issue. You will of course get to shoot 4K videos with both the cameras, but with different facilities. The Sony A1 camera has 10-bit 4:2:0 internal capture along with 16-bit RAW via HDMI. The Nikon Z9 camera has 8- or 10-bit H.265. The other two features of 10-bit Apple ProRes 4:2:2 HQ and 12-bit in-camera ProRes RAW HQ will also be available when the new firmware update will be released in 2022.
Autofocus, ISO, and Sensor Resolution
Photo clicked by Nikon Z9
Photo Courtesy: www.dpreview.com
The Sony A1 camera comes with 759 phase-detect AF points and 425 contrast-detect AF points, whereas the Nikon Z9 provides 493 hybrid AF points, along with 405 auto-area AF points. But on the other hand, it can focus up to -6.5EV in low light conditions, beating the Sony A1 that focuses only till -4EV. Both have Deep Learning AF that helps in detecting subjects accurately. This feature varies significantly in the two cameras. In Sony A1, you can have eye detect AF facilities in humans, animals, and birds in capturing still photographs, and only eye-detect AF facilities on humans in case of shooting videos. In Nikon Z9, however, you will get vast subject recognition options, which include human eyes, faces, heads and upper bodies, animal eyes, their heads and bodies, cars, planes, trains, and motorbikes, in both still as well as video photography.
If we compare the ISO in the two cameras, we must put the Sony A1, which has an ISO of 100-32,000, which is expandable to 50-102,400, much ahead of the Nikon Z9, which has an ISO of 64-25,600, which is expandable to 32-102,400.
While both the cameras have a back-side illuminated (BSI), stacked image sensor, in the case of the Sony A1, the resolution is 50.1MP, whereas, in Nikon Z9, the resolution is 45.7MP. But according to experts, this little difference in megapixels has a negligible effect on performance.
Burst Shooting
Photo clicked by Sony A1
Photo Courtesy: www.dpreview.com
While the Sony A1 only shoots burst at a speed of 30 fps, the Nikon Z9 offers an unbelievable continuous shooting speed of 120 fps. But if you want to shoot in RAW, you will get only 20 fps continuous speed in Nikon Z9. The Sony A1, on the other hand, provides 30 fps continuous speed in RAW.
As you can see clearly, the two cameras give tough competition to each other. Both the Sony A1 and Nikon Z9 have some stronger and weaker points. You should buy the one that fulfills your target.
Written By Sanga Basu, Content Writer, WPC.
