Wednesday, September 13, 2017

SONY A9 amazing for photographers but currently no picture style for the 4K video. Firmware may be coming!

Well SONY is to be congratulated on an amazing action camera with features that will keep the competition on their toes to keep up. At 24megapixel along with a staggering 20 shots per second you will not be missing the action! So photographers this is a must have camera!

For videographers well it's quite a different story for now.
If you're thinking B camera well think again because without picture styles it's going to be a tough day in the field to get the look feel and style you're after and more importantly in post trying to match up the video beyond REC 709 specs with other cameras.

Bottomline there are simply are no cine-like, log type, gamma flexible type settings on this model. One has to wonder why not, especially at a 4500.00 price tag, by far the most expensive Alpha series camera from Sony. It's cousins like the A7R II heck even the A6500 ($1200.00) have "Picture Style" feature.

Will Sony have a firmware upgrade? Thats the $65 million dollar question as no one at Sony has  responded to the many forums and articles posing the same question. Are the A9's electronics even capable of supporting "Picture Style.".

Don't get me wrong here as Sony is an amazing company with state of the art, bleeding edge technology! The question: Is that enough to keep a truly PROFESSIONAL camera like the A9 flying off the shelves of their dealers minus this IMPORTANT FEATURE? Time will tell but for now we'll have to sit and wait and hope that Sony steps forward to it's dedicated professional customer base to shed some light on the subject!


UPDATE PICTURE STYLE:S-LOG may be on the near horizon !
According to B&H QA forum Anthony from Sony responded that while it will not have Pro Res 422 support they will be adding LOG in a future firmware upgrade. So the good news is that YES it does have the electronics to support this feature!