BUILT FOR SPEED
If you’re a sports or action photographer (or shoot anything that needs speed), you’re very much in the crosshairs of camera makers at the moment. Whether your preference is for a DSLR or a mirrorless camera, everybody wants a slice of your action.
If the DSLR is your thing, both Canon and Nikon are ensuring you can keep going for a few good years yet. If you’re ready for mirrorless – or already there – there’s something for you in every major sensor size… with better to come.
Sony has led this latter charge, but with the competition amping up all over the place, it’s given its full-frame mirrorless speedster both a facelift and a bit of a reworking. The essentials stay much the same though – pretty much because everybody else is still playing catch-up – but the many revisions are designed to keep the A9 II (or the ILCE-9M2) well and truly in the game for a lot longer.
On the outside, it starts with a redesigned body with significantly upgraded weather-proofing – something obviously important to anybody who mostly shoots outdoors. This includes a more substantial gasket around the lens mount, plus a new cover arrangement for the memory card compartment which now has a double-sealed opening.
The external covers are still magnesium alloy with a chassis of the same material beneath. The handgrip has been resized and reshaped, making it more comfortable in the hand while also improving the camera’s manoeuvrability, especially when using longer and heavier lenses.
It also makes the camera more comfortable when it’s being used for long periods of time, which is often the case with sporting events.
On the inside, the A9 II still has same backside-illuminated (BSI) stacked CMOS sensor as its predecessor (more about this shortly), but it’s now mated with a newer version of Sony’s Bionz X processor which, among other things, delivers improved noise reduction processing and better colour reproduction. It also packs new control algorithms for the autofocusing. There’s also an all-new mechanical shutter assembly which is both faster – twice as fast as the A9’s – and more durable with an
