I did a thing….New Camera in the House Sony a9III

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Icee said:
Just catching up on this thread as I've been away.

As a ex pro sports photographer you have created the perfect nightmare, 10K images to go through and dead line in 30mins!!! :ROFLMAO:
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Actually not really. I have them set as groups and tagging is super easy. You can play back the groups as a video, hit pause, adjust to the frame you want and tag it. Then when importing into photomechanic sort by just the tagged images and boom! 10k can drop to 100 that easily.
 
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I didn't make use of the camera's grouping and tagging functions as I hate doing any culling in camera but it sounds like a really good workflow.
Regardless, I found culling 10K A9III images sometimes faster than culling 3K out of my A1. Mostly because using software like PhotoMechanic (or what I use is my friend's program he wrote called Winnow) you can literally hold down the right arrow and watch the frames fly by like a video, quick pause for a great frame (perfect head, wing position or dynamic pose or whatever) hit the key to select as a keeper and then continue on. You are getting a lot of extra frames but you know you are only looking for a few good ones in any burst and it is so fast to go through them. I found that because of the smaller 24MP files vs 50MP files, the frame advance (using the embedded jpegs) was so smooth that it was just like watching a slowed down video and culling was a breeze.
 
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Male Pied Flycatcher and a greedy Woodpecker :)


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Here are a few shots from today. Bird action was slow but the insect AF of this camera continues to blow me away.


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Few bird shots from today.
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@DavidT
New forum member here. I found you and your content and forum posts by searching for a9III users and their opinions on wildlife photography with the camera. I received mine on Thursday of this week, and holy cow do I love it. I'm considering selling my A1 and A7RV to cover the cost. I am not a paid pro, just a hobbyist with a good enough income for the nice toys. I honestly don't mind the resolution loss. The details are still there. You're definitely able to get shots you normally couldn't with any less camera. Are you still shooting with yours? Going to keep it in your arsenal? :cool:
 
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trippalhealicks said:
@DavidT
New forum member here. I found you and your content and forum posts by searching for a9III users and their opinions on wildlife photography with the camera. I received mine on Thursday of this week, and holy cow do I love it. I'm considering selling my A1 and A7RV to cover the cost. I am not a paid pro, just a hobbyist with a good enough income for the nice toys. I honestly don't mind the resolution loss. The details are still there. You're definitely able to get shots you normally couldn't with any less camera. Are you still shooting with yours? Going to keep it in your arsenal? :cool:
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Welcome and I’m glad you found this thread! I still have both a1’s. I’ve been shooting the a9III currently as I’ve been spending time learning the camera. It’s also a season I shoot a lot of sports and it’s by far the best sports camera I’ve ever shot!
I do plan on selling one a1 likely by mid October. My spouse also shoots so it’s nice to have three bodies but I do plan on upgrading both to the new a1 when it comes out likely next year. I’d rather sell one before the market falls on used a1’s.
I do believe the a9III is a good companion to the a1 and unless I was only a sports photographer I think the a1 and a9III make good partners. I could see selling the a7 or a1 but I personally wouldn’t sell both as having diversity in my kit is always welcomed. If you shoot action I’d keep the a1 and sell the a7.
Just my 2 cents.
 
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DavidT said:
Welcome and I’m glad you found this thread! I still have both a1’s. I’ve been shooting the a9III currently as I’ve been spending time learning the camera. It’s also a season I shoot a lot of sports and it’s by far the best sports camera I’ve ever shot!
I do plan on selling one a1 likely by mid October. My spouse also shoots so it’s nice to have three bodies but I do plan on upgrading both to the new a1 when it comes out likely next year. I’d rather sell one before the market falls on used a1’s.
I do believe the a9III is a good companion to the a1 and unless I was only a sports photographer I think the a1 and a9III make good partners. I could see selling the a7 or a1 but I personally wouldn’t sell both as having diversity in my kit is always welcomed. If you shoot action I’d keep the a1 and sell the a7.
Just my 2 cents.
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That's probably the best idea. Once you go blackout-free shooting, it's hard to use non-stacked sensor cameras for anything that's moving. I just can't give up the a9III's ability to grab subjects even in visually complicated scenarios. I have some video and sequences of shots at 120fps where the camera just completely disregards branches and other obstructions and just stays LOCKED onto birds' eyes. I even had a Cardinal repeatedly hiding and peeking his eyes out from behind a leaf, and even when he was hidden, the camera moved to body focus to keep the bird in-focus. It's a pretty significant step forward from the A1's focusing system.

Although, for less busy shots where the subject is better isolated from obstructions as well as filling the frame for the most part, I don't find that it's all that much better than the A1 at grabbing focus on birds. Maybe a little, but nothing as significant as the A9III's ability to grab focus on partially-obstructed birds.

Thanks for the input, @DavidT !
 
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