Sony Announces a9 III, World’s First Global Sensor Full-Frame Camera
Sony has announced the Alpha 9 Mark III, the world’s first full-frame camera with global shutter. It can shoot at 120 frames per second without blackout and with a maximum shutter speed of 1/80,000 second.
The Sony Alpha A9 III is a full-frame mirrorless camera with a stacked 24.6-megapixel image sensor and succeeds its predecessor, the A9 II, which launched four years ago. The new product is the first full-frame camera to use a global shutter.
This technology allows the image sensor to read data from each pixel simultaneously, both when shooting video and photos. Most mirrorless cameras, such as the Canon R5, Panasonic GH5 and Nikon Z9, are equipped with a shutter that reads data line by line, that is, lines of pixels. This can lead to the appearance of some distortions in the photo caused by the movements of objects in the frame. By definition, the global shutter does not have such a drawback.
The Alpha A9 III can shoot burst photos of 14-bit RAW images at 120 frames per second. The buffer is designed for 192 images. Moreover, the shots are taken with real-time autofocus (thanks to the Bionz XR image processor), as well as flash synchronization at any shutter speed. By the way, the shortest shutter speed is 1/80000 second or 1/16000 for continuous shooting.
Powering the camera is the Bionz XR processing engine, promising eight times more power than the a9 Mark II’s processor.
