Sony India announced a major upgrade to its α9 mirrorless camera that will be available to the users through a firmware updates. Sony’s revolutionary α9 camera will receive several major enhancements to its award-winning autofocus (AF) performance and image quality, as well as a variety of new features that are designed to improve the overall workflow for professional photographers. In addition, new firmware updates for α7R III and α7 III will be available that update these cameras with the latest enhancements including Real-time Eye AF performance and add interval recording capacities.
Hiroyuki Tokuno, Head of Digital Imaging Division, Sony India said, “The new firmware upgrades to Sony’s acclaimed α9 to enhance its key features is an outcome of our commitment to the fact that we strive to offer nothing less than a premium experience to our customers. Their voice is critical to everything we do and being able to provide our customers with new capabilities is a source of great pride for Sony.”
Evolved Eye AF with half press activation and right and left selection
With this new firmware version 5.0 and 3.0 Sony’s acclaimed α9 camera and popular α7R III and α7 III full-frame cameras and will receive advanced “Real-time Eye AF,” the latestversion of Sony’s acclaimed Eye AF technology. In all autofocus modes, the camera can automatically detect the eyes of the subject and activate Eye AF with a half press of the shutter button, and the camera will seamlessly track the eyes at all times when in AF-C mode. The new firmware also enables photographers to select the preferred eye (left or right) of their subject as the focus point. The Evolved Eye AF is used to detect and keep track of the subject’s eye in real time for extremely high tracking precision. The focus area will seamlessly change between face and eye according to the condition of the subject1.
Real Time Tracking to capture subject with extreme precision
This exciting new capability utilizes Sony’s latest algorithm—including Artificial Intelligence-based object recognition—and processes color, subject distance (depth), pattern (brightness) as well as spatial information to ensure that all subjects can be captured with extreme accuracy and precision. The new firmware versions 5.0 for α9 and 3.0 for α7R IIIand α7 III adds Sony’s newly developed Real-time Tracking mode for object tracking. During photography or videography of humans or animals, face and eye position information is recognized by AI and the subject’s eye is monitored in real time with extremely high tracking precision. In addition, “Tracking On” helps initiate real-time tracking at any time by simply pressing the custom-assigned button and “Touch Tracking,” which quickly activates through the touch screen.
Real-time Eye AF for Animals for Wildlife photography
Version 3.0 firmware for the α7R III and α7 III cameras will add Eye AF for animal eyesi, an exciting new feature for wildlife photographers that will enable interval shooting functionality for creating time-lapse movies. The animal Eye AF update for α9 is scheduled for Summer 2019.
Interval Record Functionality for time-lapse movies
The α9, α7R III and α7 III cameras will also receive interval recording functionality that will allow for simple creation of time-lapse moviesvii. The new feature can be set for anywhere between 1 and 60 seconds, with a total number of shots from 1 to 9999. AE tracking sensitivity can also be adjusted to “High”, “Mid” or “Low” during interval recording, allowing for reduced changes in exposure over the shooting interval. In addition, Sony’s upgrade will also offer other focusing capabilities, available with the new firmware like Touch Pad, TouchTracking, an extended phase-detection AF aperture range that has been increased from F11 to F16, and Fast Hybrid AF for movie shooting that provides smooth, automated focusing for movies.
Improved Features and Imaging Edge Mobile applications support for professional photographers
Image quality will also be enhanced with the new α9 firmware version 5.0. Specifically, in the areas of color reproduction, as the camera will more accurately account for subtle changes in light for smoother, more natural tonal gradations in elements like the sky. There is a new auto white balance algorithm that gets added as well, which produces more consistently balanced images while burst shooting. Other new functions for efficient controls and data managements include My Dial and Dual Slot media menu improvement, rating and protect functions.
In addition to the several new capabilities, the firmware also adds compatibility with Sony’s new ‘Imaging Edge Mobile’ application – the successor to the PlayMemories Mobile™ application. The new Imaging Edge Mobile application features a ‘Transfer & Tagging add-on’ to assist professional workflow. This allows photographers to transfer images from their camera to their smartphone simultaneously using the FTP transfer functionality,and adds support for including IPTC metadata on transferred images.
The new system firmware update version 5.0 and version 3.0 is already available. A variety of exclusive stories and exciting new content related to all of Sony’s exciting announcements can be found at alphacommunity.sony.co.in, a site built to educate and inspire all fans and customers of the Sony α brand. The new content will also be posted directly at the Sony Photo Gallery and the Sony India Channel on YouTube.
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