When the Sony a9 III was introduced, the company did an incredible job of describing what it could do. But at the same time, they did an awful job of showing us what it could do. When I say us, I mean real photographers — the ones who know how to imagine things instead of looking at the back of a screen and capturing them. It’s the idea of seeing and not looking. Specifically, they didn’t help photographers truly realize what this camera could do for off-camera flash work. Considering how much I love working with off-camera flash, I decided to dedicate pretty much this entire review to off-camera flash work. So if you’re a strobist, this review is for you.
Editor’s Note: Some images in this review were shot while on an all-expenses paid press junket with Sony. They did it in NYC in late 2023. Some of those images are in this review, and during that time, the Phoblographer only accepted a few refreshments. We declined the hotel, flights, etc. The majority of the images in this review were shot on our own bill. Phoblographer’s editors are trained to resist temptation in the industry, and as such, the opinions in this review are our own. We stand by our words, and transparency is the key here. We encourage you to check out more about our transparency on our disclaimers page.
Table of Contents
The Big Picture
By far, the Sony a9 III is the single best camera that Sony has made thus far. Nearly every issue that I’ve had with the company’s cameras over the years has been resolved in some way or another. Ergonomically speaking, this is the most perfect Sony camera I’ve held. It truly feels like the evolution of a Minolta camera for mirrorless. It’s simple enough to use, and anything that you really need can be wired to a button or two. But perhaps the greatest innovation is the global shutter. While I miss the fact that I could physically feel the shutter, I’ll accept that it comes with new technology that makes strobism even better. If you’re a photographer that uses a lot of off-camera flash, then this is the single best camera you can get on the market right now.
I wouldn’t consider this a reason to not get the camera, but Sony could truly benefit from adding some sort of tactile feedback for photographers shooting stills.
As they’ve made new technology, a few problems come with it. They need to fix issues around the different kinds of flash syncing. And of course, Sony stills greatly needs to improve their low-light autofocus around people of color with melanin in their skin. Nikon and Leica are far ahead of the brand in this regard.
Either way, the Sony a9 III wins our Editor’s Choice award and five out of five stars. Want one? It’s available for just under $6,000.
Pros
- Innovation for strobists; the LED is not taking over.
- Good image stabilization
- Good skin tones
- Sony’s best weather resistance
- Great autofocus
- Good high ISO output, but we’ve seen better from the competition
Cons
- Autofocus on people of color with melanin in their skin in low-light situations really needs to be worked on.
- Flash sync oddities that need to be worked out
- I’d really, really like some sort of tactile feedback that tells me that I’ve taken a photograph.
Who Is the Sony a9 III For?
This is a pretty fascinating camera. It has applications for wildlife photography, sports photography, photjournalism, and weddings. That’s all dealing with capturing moments. But for more artistic photographers, the fast flash sync option opens up possibilites that haven’t been availalbe in photography before. If you shoot portraits, this is a camera to surely consider — especially because the skin tones are much better than previous iterations of this camera.
Innovations: Why Would Someone Buy the Sony a9 III?
Besides the ability to shoot at 120fps with tracking, the Sony a9 III is the first interchangeable lens camera in a photo-centric camera body with a global shutter. So it can also do incredible things with flash sync.
Gear Used
The Sony a9 III we borrowed was from Lensrentals. We used it with our own camera gear. That includes a Profoto B10, Tamron 35-150mm f2-f2.8, Tamron 17-28mm f2.8, Tamron 70-300mm, and the Sony Zeiss 55mm f1.8.
Hardware
The Sony a9 III has a few big updates to it that have made it a much better camera for those of us who constantly complain about Sony’s ergonomics. To back this statement up, I’ve only ever heard newer photographers and paid ambassadors talk about how they like Sony’s ergonomics. The exception is the very few who’ve shot with Minolta — and even they were a smaller player back in the film days.
But this? Wow. The little slope on the shutter button makes a huge difference and is a major call-back to the company’s older Minolta cameras. The camera sports dials that you’ve got for control with optional locks — and they all feel very standard. Personally, I still like Nikon’s dials more as the tactile feeling of them really lets you know that the settings are being changed. The buttons don’t feel like cheap afterthoughts, either. In fact, these are some of the best buttons I’ve ever felt on a Sony camera. They’re reminiscent of something along the lines of an Apple keyboard, though with a bit more give.
Gripping the camera in your hand and walking around with a lens attached is also a pleasant experience overall. I truly can’t complain about the improvements here from an ergonomics standpoint.
As far as I go, Sony knocked this one out of the park, and we can’t find the ball at all.
Protect Your Camera Gear with the Photography Care Program
The Sony a9 III is the company’s most weather-resistant camera yet. We shot with it outside in pouring March rain here in NYC, and it survived when using Tamron lenses. Tamron’s lenses are without a doubt, as well sealed as Sony’s G Master lenses. And we’d argue that they’re even better. The big thing here is the hot shoe — we shot without the cover on in the rain and it worked just great.
But of course, accidents can happen. More importantly, if your camera malfunctions due to rain, Sony’s warranty doesn’t cover weather resistance issues. And that’s why the Phoblogrpaher made the Photography Care Program.
For years, here at The Phoblographer we’ve done tests on cameras, lenses, bags, computers, lights, and more. And we know that your warranty doesn’t always cover the damage. Plus, accidents can happen on set.
This is why we’ve created a Photography Care Program in partnership with Full-Frame Insurance. Now, photographers across the United States looking for extra security can get various protections to cover their craft. The Photography Care Program provides peace of mind; now you’ll know you can bounce back from a photoshoot gone awry, on-site or inside. We’re making it super easy to get it done, too!
Visit our landing page to learn more about coverage.
Ease of Use
Overall, there isn’t much that’s different from the Sony cameras that have been around previously. So if you’re familiar with any of them, then this will be second nature once you learn the ins and outs of the menu system. And for anyone that’s curious, I decided to be a menace and use the camera in auto mode. If you’re handing the camera off to someone to use, then auto will work just fine. In fact, at times, I think it does a better job than the manual setting because it can beter optomize a scene the balance highlights and shadows.
One of the things that I noticed working with the Sony a9 III in auto mode is the fact that it adapts and chooses all these other scene modes based on what it recognizes, the focusing settings, etc. That means that if the lighting on a person is primarily coming from behind them, the camera will balance the two out pretty well. Even more amazingly the images look good and not like an iPhone attempting to do an HDR portrait.
Our coverage of using the camera in auto mode
Perhaps the coolest thing about this camera, however, is that you can now shoot at any time of the day without needing high speed sync, an ND filter, etc, and still get the power you need from the high that you’re using. Photographers can keep your ISO settings low, which is a genuine concern for many photographers these days who want better colors. Better yet, this is a camera for strobists. LEDs generally aren’t powerful enough to shoot this way at lower ISO settings and for the same amount of money as a strobe like a Profoto B10. For creative photographers, this is incredible. The camera caters to those of us with an imagination who don’t need to see what the camera gives us. So with that said, I recommend turning off the exposure preview setting and instead wiritng a button to the Shot Result Preview function if you truly need it. But otherwise, just read the light meter and you’ll get a better idea of what you’re working with.
Sony should be praised for catering to the imagination. You can’t see this through the viewfinder. And it’s better than just aimlessly capturing things. Imagining a scene and artistic intent are what’s going to save photography from itself and posers calling themselves creators. Essentially, you can now turn any location you want into a studio with the Sony a9 III.
What you’ll want to keep in mind is that the lowest native ISO setting is ISO 250. You can shoot lower than that, but I wish it went down into somewhere like ISO 25.
One of the new things is the new Flash menu settings. And that can be see in the section below.
The Secret Setting You Need to Know About
When I originally tested the Sony a9 III, I was amazed that this camera didn’t need to go into high-speed sync. That’s because it has a global shutter, so the flash could sync normally at any setting. During the announcement day, I couldn’t grasp why the camera and Profoto lights still did so. It wasn’t until a friend who works for a retailer told me about this secret menu item. It’s called Flash Timing Setting — and it’s something others haven’t talked about. The sweet spot is to set it to 400 and above.
With this setting activated, the camera and a strobe, like the Profoto B10 I used, can shoot pretty seamlessly, and the camera won’t say that it’s in high-speed sync mode when you’re into somewhere like 1/12,800. But you also have to do other things too. The flash can’t be in TTL mode, you have to set it manually. Typically, you have to be at full power with a strobe such as the B10. In some situations, though, you can dial it back a bit.
I truly wish that I could do TTL and fast shutter sync. But I also know how to light manually. With all this in mind, I took the knowledge to the parade and shot photos. For the record, below is the original photo and slightly edited photo from the Sony a9 III.
All of this is only possible because of the Sony A9 III’s global shutter.
Further Exploration of Flash
Sony has a few other settings that are very curious. First off, the flash timing settings can’t be used in conjunction with slow sync or fill-flash mode. It cannot be used with rear sync. Why? We’re not sure. Sony wasn’t able to give us an explanation when we asked them.
To recap what we said earlier, if you’re seeing the flash setting go into HSS on the back of the camera menu, then you’re not in the right settings.
Something else to note, the flash timing settings can’t be used with the pre-capture setting. It’s odd, because it’s all just a global shutter and theoretically, it should because there isn’t a physical shutter. But previously, the pre-capture settings only worked with the electronic shutter mode. So this might need to be tinkered with by Sony’s engineers.
Above is an image shot at rear sync. In rear sync, the Profoto transmitter said that it was still in first curtain flash. This camera cannot do 2nd curtain flash — but instead does rear sync. They’re kind of similar, but not at the same time. When tested the Profoto transmitter on the a7r III I found out that Profoto’s transmitter won’t do second curtain flash on it either. So overall, it’s just a problem with the old Minolta flash system that’s still at the heart of Sony’s flashes.
To help you understand this more, here’s an image also shot in rear sync. But you’re not seeing the effects much because the flash is just hitting my main subject in the front. If it hit the bus, I’d see seomthing different. Of course, this also means that you can shoot at very slow shutter speed. In fact, I shot at 2 seconds handheld, and got an image without camera shake. You can see that image below.
Beyond this, if you’re using flash, then know that it’s much better to use the flash timing settings with an off-camera strobe because they’re the only things powerful enough to be able ptoduce the intended effect. By that, I mean making the day look straight up like night, as shown in the comparison image above.
Focusing
Still needs user assistance to find little birds in a scene that are camouflaged. So with that said, you’ll need to use a specific autofocusing spot and give the camera that little bit of aid instead of using the automatic wide setting. This also goes for street photography — which I consider to be the ultimate test for cameras like this. Photographer Paul Kessel uses the Sony a9 II for street photography. He’s now considered one of the best in NYC. Where the camera suffers though is with people of color with deeper amounts of melanin in their skin in low light situations. Nikon and Leica are still far ahead of Sony in this case.
Metering
Metering is odd with this camera: the Sony a9 III doesn’t really abide by Sunny 16 all that well. I can sometimes be more or less around a stop or so off. It kind of has to be expected with Sony. But the new Global Shutter technology in this camera might affect things even more. For strobists, know that what you expect from your strobes at 1/125th, f5.6, and ISO 400 might not be exactly what you’re used to seeing.
Image Quality
Sony is getting closer to giving me images I don’t want to edit — they’re still not there though. And they’re really not there in various ways. I want multiple exposure modes and film presets and all. What I like the most about it is the skin tones. They’re very good now and much improved over the previous a9 series cameras. In Capture One, which is recommended by Sony’s reps, the RAW file versatility is quite good. You can see that in the image below. What’s even more impressive is that this image was shot at ISO 6400 — and that means that even at that setting, the dynamic range is quite excellent.
In contrast, Lightroom is a bit odd. Sure, it can do the job. And when it comes to high ISO noise, it does a better job. But for colors and dynamic range, I really like Capture One more. Phoblographer’s subscribers get a discount to Capture One and Skylum, just so you’re aware. You can read more about our membership here.
When editing files digitally, however, the sensor output isn’t as grain free as I’d like it to be. By that, I mean that other brands can do better.
In our high ISO print test, we printed an ISO 6400 photograph on the Canon Prograf 1000 and Canson Infinity paper. The results are as follows:
- The Sony a9 III isn’t bad at 6400. But we’ve seen better.
- The Panasonic S1, a camera that’s almost 5 years old, has cleaner output at ISO 6400 compared to the Sony a9 III, when printed at the same size.
- The Leica SL2s does better.
- So does the Nikon Z5.
- The Panasonic S5 II has around the same high ISO noise output, but it’s a bit cleaner than the Sony.
If you’re just putting your images online, then know that Adobe Lightroom, with its AI noise reducer, does a great job even at ISO 12,800. Specifically it does a great job if you overexpose your scene by anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of a stop to give the shadows more light.
Example Image Samples
The Phoblographer has been huge on transparency with our audience since day one. Nothing from this review is sponsored. Further, many folks will post reviews and show lots of editing in the photos. The problem then becomes that anyone and everyone can do the same thing. They’re not showing what the lens can do. So, we have a section in our Extra Image Samples area to show edited and unedited photos. From this, you can decide for yourself.
Edited
Unedited
Edited With Phoblographer’s Lightroom Presets (Available for Purchase)
The following images were edited with the Phoblographer’s Lightroom Presets, which are available for purchase at our online store.
Tech Specs
- 24.6-megapixel full-frame stacked sensor
- Global shutter at up to 120 fps
- No flash sync speed limits, even while using third-party flashes
- Global shutter also eliminates banding caused by flickering lights
- Shutter speed up to 1/80,000 in single shot, burst up to 1/16,000
- Shortcut button to quickly go from 20 fps to 120 fps
- In-camera star rating to quickly sort through those 120 fps bursts
- Pre-Capture for up to 1 second before the shutter is released
- Real-time eye autofocus, even with 120 fps
- 759 autofocus points covering 95.6 percent of the frame
- Low light autofocus down to -5 EV at f1.8
- Tilting LCD touchscreen
- 9.44 million dot OLED EVF with 120 fps refresh rate at highest quality or 240 fps with reduced quality
- Dust and weather-resistant
- Shipping Spring 2024 for $5,999