Sony Alpha 1 (ILCE-1) Review | 4K

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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and I'm here today to give you my standard review of the Sony Alpha-1, 50-Megixel full-frame mirrorless sports slash video-slash-resolution camera
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Sony just calls this the one because it does pretty much everything
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You've heard of the jack of all trades and the master of none. Well, the Alpha One is essentially the jack of all trades and master of all
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It is an extraordinarily advanced camera with tons of technical capabilities, but it does come with a price tag to match
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I initially was turned off by that price tag of $6,500 U.S. dollars
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which places it more than $2,000 more expensive, in fact, more than $2,500 more expensive than the
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the Canon EOS R5. In fact, you could buy a Canon EOS R5 and an EOS R6 for the same price, or for that matter
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You could buy yourself a Sony A7R Mark 3 and maybe even a, you know, Sony AS3 to pair together for the same price as well
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So initially, it's like it's just, it's just too expensive. But the longer I thought about it, the more that the appeal of the Alpha 1 grew on me
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as I considered the fact that it could do everything that my A7R Mark 3 did and more
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it could do everything that my A9 did and more. And so at the end of the day, here we are
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and I have sold both my R3 and my A9 to actually people that to follow this channel
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and I hope that they get a lot of years of great use out of those cameras to help to fund the Alpha One that I'm filming on right now
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and I'm using the Sony's ice plane R 50 millimeter F1, 4 lends to film this review. I want to thank our sponsor of today's episode, which is
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Phantom Wallet, which has been a loyal supporter of this channel now for about a year and a half
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Thanks also to Camera Canada and the guys over there, they really went to
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out of their way to help me in sourcing an alpha one. Supply is pretty scarce right now
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but they really went to bat for me to make sure that I could get one, and so that I could be
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doing this review for you here today. So thanks to Camera, Canada, I found them to be a great
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retailer. I discovered them about a year ago, and I've bought basically everything that I have
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bought since that point from them, and they have done a great job. They've got a great website
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So if you're in Canada, check them out, and they're a great retailer for that. Now, today we are
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doing the standard review. If you missed or want the defense. review with a deep dive into all aspects of camera performance. You can find that here
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check that out. Today we're going to give you more of the highlights. So let's talk about
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build handling and features here. First of all, taking the look at the camera itself, you might
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have a similar reaction to my wife when I showed her this new uber expensive camera that I
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had purchased. Her response was, eh, it looks like some of your other cameras. Fair enough
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It does look very much like other cameras, like the A7 R Mark 4 or the A9 Mark 2, particularly the A9 Mark 2 where there are a tremendous amount of
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similarities in the dial and button situation. What we have is very similar dimensions to those cameras, though we are just a little bit
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heavier here. I believe 737 grams, and that comes down mostly to having a more enhanced build quality
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just more durable magnesium alloys in the construction, along with more advanced weather
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seals. And I think that finally we can later rest the perception that Sony's weather
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ceiling is not up to snuff compared to the more established brands. They seem to have
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finally figured all of that out. And so that's where I believe that the extra weight comes in
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Other than that, looking at the camera itself, you won't notice a lot of differences, but there
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are some important differences inside. One of the most notable standouts is that we have
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an incredibly improved viewfinder. 9.44 million. which is the highest resolution I've ever seen in a viewfinder. And to top that, it has up to a 240
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frame per second refresh rate to allow it to keep up with high speed action without blackout. And so
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obviously you don't want to necessarily engage 240 frames per second all the time. But if you're
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tracking fast action that really allows you to have a seamless viewing experience And I would say we getting very close to rivaling the performance of an optical viewfinder though with all of the advantages of an electronic viewfinder
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So kudos to Sony on that. That's actually one of the things that turn me off a bit about the A9 Mark 2
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is that it didn't even have as higher resolution a viewfinder as what we found in the A7R Mark 4
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And so nice to see a vastly improved viewfinder here. Another improvement is that while we don't have a larger
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LCD screen on the back. It's still a 3-inch with a 1.44 million dots of resolution
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So that should have been upgraded. No question about it. But what is upgraded is touch capabilities
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I've been harping on this for years with Sony cameras. It's great to see them finally respond
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to where now both the quick menu and the main menu can be navigated via touch
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And it pretty much does everything that I would expect it to do. Basically, they've caught up to
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where Canon was years ago with their touch menu. But the responsiveness is improved
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and it's just generally a better thing to use at this point
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Another upgrade, which you can't see from the outside, is that the shutter mechanism
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the mechanical shutter has been upgraded due to some carbon fiber parts
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It is a very durable, but also very low vibration shutter mechanism
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And one thing that stood out to me is that, number one, I like the sound and the feel of it
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But secondly, I noticed that it, and introduces so little vibration that I didn't really notice a difference in trying to handhold
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slow shutter shots between the electronic shutter and the mechanical shutter. One of the other things, however, that they have done here is that that mechanical shutter
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it does give you up to 10 frames per second, which sounds like this
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But also as a part of that, they have upped the flash sink speed up to 1,400th of a second
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with the mechanical shutter, which I think is the highest figure that I've ever personally. personally seen. But they, of course, this camera is really designed around an electronic shutter
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That is the heart of things where you get up to 30 frames per second, which is an incredible
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figure like I've never really seen before, particularly with such a high resolution body
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But on top of that, they've managed to solve some of the major drawbacks of typically associated
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with electronic shutters, namely the fast readout from the sensor allows you to eliminate most
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of the rolling shutter effects, which means that even if you're panning, either doing stills
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or shooting video, sometimes if you have a lot of rolling shutter, things lean that should
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be upright. That's basically a non-issue here. On top of that, before, like the A9, for example, you had to switch over to mechanical shutter
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to have flash sync. No longer the case. You can get flash sync up to one-two-hundredth of a second, so it's not as good as the
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mechanical shutter, but it's basically the same standard that we've seen on many cameras
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for years. So I like that. And you can use anti-flicker technology now with the electronic
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shutter, something you couldn't previously do when shooting with, or was maybe only available
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with mechanical shutter on some of the A-9 bodies. So again, another nice upgrade as a part of that
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So a lot of things that I have been impressed with. Now, you do have two card slots
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and unlike previous Sony cameras, you now have the option here of either shooting with SD cards
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UHS2 compatible or those same slots can be used for CF Express type A cards
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Now, those CF Express cards, they're expensive right now and they're not all that common
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And so I'm personally holding off. I'm purchasing those because the good news is that almost
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all functionality of the camera is available even while using V60 rated cards
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And so I prefer the Sony tough cards, which are V90 rated camera
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And so I've not run into any issues. You can record 4K 120
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You can record 8K video, just not at the highest bit rate. You can shoot 30 frames per second
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I've not really felt any kind of limiting due to using SD cards
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So I'm going to hold on to those for a little while. So while things are not all that different on the outside
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the grip feels better than ever, though I still like a grip extender because of having larger hands
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And outside of that, you know, it feels very familiar, but it is probably the best execution of a familiar design that we've seen before
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Further upgraded is the autofocus system to where we now have 759 points that covers 92% of the sensor
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That means you'll have an autofocus point, basically wherever that you're trying to track action on
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And more importantly is that there's a lot of lofty claims with focus points these days on cameras
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that seems to be kind of more marketing hype than anything. But what really matters here is that they have doubled the amount of calculations per second
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that the A9 Mark 2 could do up to 120 calculations per second
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That's both focus calculations and metering calculations to back up that. So that means that you're able to track action with effortless speed like never before
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with up to 30 frames per second. Now I did note that when I went out to attract action and thanks to Jengar Goldens for bringing out the dogs to allow me to track their action but I shot some with the Sigma 100 to 400 and I could only manage about 15 frames per second
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and I would say about a 70% perfectly focused rate. I switched over to the Sony 135mm F1.8 GM, and I unlocked the 30 frames per second
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which I actually counted, and I got 30 frames per second. And beyond that, I also got basically 100% perfect focus
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I mean, it was almost uncanny how well-focused everything was, even shooting at F2
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Very, very impressive. And so I will say on that note that if you want to unlock the most capabilities out of the alpha one
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you probably need to pair it with a Sony lens because it seems like that may be, you know
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some of the handshaking that is going on that you're going to get best performance in terms of frames for second
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by using a native Sony lens. And so certainly worth a consideration
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The buffers are correspondingly deep. You can get up to 182 extra fine JPEGs or as high as 400 fine JPEGs
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238 lossy raw. So if you drop to a lossless or uncompressed, either of those are going to put you right under 100 frames before the buffer starts to slow down
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But I did find that the buffer clears fairly quickly faster than at times before
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and it seems like you can do more things while the buffer itself actually clears
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They've also improved things adding like a bird IAF, and while it's not entirely full-proof
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I did see it jump over from the bird's eye to the tail sometimes
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with the Canada geese that I was tracking. It did produce very well-focused results
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and I was able to, you know, in this shot, for example
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I just saw the bird take off out of my peripheral vision. I turned and fired without a..
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any chance, you know, to really acquire focus. And I was actually really pleasantly surprised to see that it was a perfectly
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focused shot. And so they've done a great job with focus. Also one thing that I did note is that they have
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improved eye to where, even if the subject is looking away and the camera can't really see the eye
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it is actually able now to track the eye quite effectively. And so some great things on the
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auto focus front. I mean, as you can see from the action sequences, this is an amazing, amazing action
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camera that surpasses anything that I have previously used. Those autofocus capabilities also carry on into video
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And unlike the A9 cameras that are somewhat limited in the video options, Sony threw
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everything into the Alpha 1. It basically has everything that you're going to find on an A7S3
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And so it's pretty extraordinary that you have this high resolution camera that's also
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an action camera that's also an advanced video camera, which is pretty much unprecedented
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And so in this case you have all the way up to 8k30 recording and they've designed for heat dissipation in mind so you get longer record times without the overheating issues that kind of plague the canon new releases, the iOS R5 and R6
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It has up to 4K 120 frame per second, which I really love not just for stopping traditional action, but I find that it really adds some poetic quality to some things in nature, be it snowfall and
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or the spring runoff. Slowing that down allows you to appreciate kind of the artistry of what's taking place
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And so I actually personally love 120 frames per second and I love not having to compromise on resolution to get it
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And so that's fantastic. They've even included the S-Cinitone profile, which I'm actually filming on right now
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which is a great, you know, versatile codec that isn't, you know, like a log profile
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but it has beautiful color and it actually matches very well with their cine cameras, something that you'll find there
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And it's got the full range of S-Log and HLG, and basically all the good stuff
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Tons of different bitrate options, different codex. You've got a great amount of versatility
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on what kind of video you can capture and how you capture it
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It's a fantastic camera on that metric as well. I also did some deep dive into the sensor
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and while I'm not going to cover all of that here today, I found a lot of good things
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Now, like the A9 cameras, this is a stacked BSI sensor, and the reason why it's stacked
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is because that allows the sensor to be able to have a very fast readout to pass that
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information into the pipeline as quickly as possible. So the A9, although I actually really liked the feel of images off the A9, on a technical
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level, it wasn't even up to the level of the A7S3, or excuse me, the A73, in that that
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had a similar 24 megapixel sensor, but had actually better dynamic. range and even a better high ISO performance. What I found with the sensor here on the Alpha
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1 is that while it's the stack sensor and it has that incredibly fast readout, it also is delivering
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on the technical level in that it has very good high ISO performance, even for such a high
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resolution camera. And so I found that even at 50 megapixels, or excuse me, even at ISO 25,600 or even
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ISO 32 which is the top of the native range that images I felt were useful in many applications with still retaining good levels of contrast and importantly good you know color fidelity no kind of color cast or tint or shift that took place
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there is some you know as you go up the range the noise gets a little bit more obvious
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but it never really became destructive I felt in the native range and when I compared it to
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other cameras like the iOS R5 I found that I actually slightly preferred what I saw out of the Alpha 1
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Also, when I looked at the dynamic range, Sony claims up to 15 stops
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I'm not quite sure where they're calculating that. It's maybe a little bit of a high figure
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but what I did find is that I'm getting very comparable results to their very best, like the A7R Mark 3
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the A7R Mark 4, in that in many situations, for example, here
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I could recover five stops of under exposure from the shadows and get a very clean result with no color
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shift, no real banding, a little bit of noise in some shadow areas, but really not bad at all
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And so a lot of versatility there. And I could even get a credible three-stop over-exposure
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recovery, as you can see here. It was only at four stops where it started to have that
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slightly washed out look. But even so, when I compared with the R5 and my color swatches, there were
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still a lot more colors showing up on the Alpha 1 that I had lost on the EOS R5. And so at the
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end of the day, the sensor is really producing great things, and it has great resolution
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you know, a lot of ability to deeply crop an image like this to where you can create images
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from within images. And one other feature I will highlight, actually two, one of those is that
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is something we've been looking for, and that is having a lossless raw option, and so you can
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shoot at reduced file size, which helps to manage the high resolution, but without losing any
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information. So it's a lossless compression. The other thing that I really like is that
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The APSC mode is 21 megapixels, which is obviously a very useful figure
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But on top of that, you also have an option for an oversampled full frame 21 megapixel
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JPEG option. And so what that means is you get really highly detailed JPEGs, but at a lower resolution
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point that could be very, very useful. You know, for example, for me, if I was shooting events and wanted files to pass on to
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you know, whoever was hosting the event, or, you know, in certain things where I don't
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need 50 megapixels and JPEGs will work. Being able to get great looking JPEGs at a lower
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resolution point is actually a really valuable feature for myself. So at the end of the day
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there's actually very, very little to complain about when it comes to the Alpha 1. It has incredible
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performance. The sensor performance is fantastic. The autofocus performance is fantastic. The video
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performance is fantastic. And while I don't love the ergonomics as well as, say, the Canon EOS
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R5. This is the best execution of a Sony camera that I've ever used before due to some of those
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fine details like, you know, a better, you know, having touch capability in the LCD, a great
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viewfinder, things like that, slightly better grip. And so, you know, it's continued progress
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in the right direction. I really love the camera in every way, basically accept the price. And
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it is incredibly expensive. So what that means is that it's not a camera for everyone. If you're a
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a photographer that doesn't need like fast action, then in your shooting mostly portraits or
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landscapes, an A7R Mark 4 probably makes more sense for you. Or if you need the action but not the
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high resolution, one of the A9 cameras might make more sense. If you're just a video person
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the A7S3 is going to be maybe the better option for you. But if you're someone that wants it all
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and does it all, the Alpha 1 is giving you unparalleled performance. And
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A plus these days is that Sony has one of the richest catalog of lenses available
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We complained about that a few years ago, but at this stage, they've got one of the richest
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catalog of lenses outside of maybe long telephotos of any brand that I've ever seen before
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There are just so many great lenses at a lot of different price points, and that's an advantage
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that Canon just doesn't yet have on its RF system to where you're primarily limited to more
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expensive lenses. So at the end of the day, the alpha one, while expensive, in some ways, is worth the money if you need that much camera
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I'm Dustin Abbott. If you look in the description down below, you can find linkage to my full text review
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There's also linkage there to an image gallery with lots of different photos
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I got a lot of photos I'm proud of from the camera, so check that out. There are buying links, and if you are instead, I recommend that you get in the queue because right now the demand is outstripping the supply
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And so the quicker you get in line, the quicker you'll get one for your. yourself. And of course, as always, there is linkage there to check out my merch with new options
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being added there. There's linkage to follow me on social media, to become a patron, sign up for
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my newsletter that comes out every Thursday. And of course, if you haven't already, please click
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that subscribe button right here on YouTube. Be sure to click that bell so you're notified when
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new content drops. Thanks for watching. Have a great day and let the light in

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Sony Alpha 1 (ILCE-1) Review | 4K

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