Sony A1 II review
Sony announced the A1 II in late 2024 , roughly four years after the original A1. The A1 that was a groundbreaking camera with no peer at the time of its debut. A 50-mega pixel camera camera that could shoot 30 fps RAW backed up by a very capable sophisticated AF system. You can read my review of the original A1 here. Fast forward 4 years, the A1 still remains one of the most capable cameras in this genre. For this second iteration Sony took the path of refining the original A1 as opposed to re-writing the book. The A1 II adds a a few major ones as well as many minor ones. I have listed the upgrades below as it relates to avian photography.
Pre-Capture
When enabled, the A1 II continuously buffers the images read from the sensor when the shutter is half-pressed. When the shutter is fully pressed it will record N number of frames prior to shutter release to the memory card. The user can set the pre-capture time as show below, the number of frames save is the pre-capture time x the continuous shooting frame rate. For example if pre-capture is set to 0.5 seconds and the cameras is set to 30fps the camera will record up to 15 frames in the last 0.5 seconds prior to the shutter being fully pressed.
Pre capture can reduce the amount of buffer available during continuous shooting. The good news is that this is not a big deal as the camera has a generous buffer. When set to compressed RAW, the A1 II can record about 160 frames at 30fps, after that it drops to about 18-20 fps and can shoot for at least another 250-300 frames before he buffer is full and frame rate drops noticeably. That a good 20 seconds of high frame rate shooting, I never encountered a situation where I ran out of buffer in the field. However there is another drawback to having pre-capture ON all the time. That is getting too many frames with each shutter press and the pain of going through and culling the redundant frames. It can be cured by using a larger CF express cards that are becoming increasingly more common these days, nevertheless deleting all of those unwanted frames can become a chore. To avoid unwanted images the pre-capture can be tied one of the camera’s programmable buttons and disabled with a tap when not desired.
Pre capture brings in almost magical power to the camera when it comes to capturing the peak of action frame. It is almost biologically impossible to beat the impulses of a bird taking off, especially when handholding a large 600mm rig, a blink of an eye, and the bird is gone, and no matter how firmly you pressed the shutter button, the resulting frames may capture part of the bird only or no bird at all. Well, the A1 II solves this problem and is able to grab the “peak” frame over and over again
Male Harrier take off, A1 II 600 f/4GM + 1.4X TC ISO-1600 ISO-1000 f/5.6 at 1/4000 sec Handheld. Click on the image to enlarge
Female Harrier take off, A1 II 600 f/4GM + 1.4X TC ISO-3200 ISO-800 f/5.6 at 1/4000 sec Handheld. Click on the image to enlarge
Female Harrier take off, A1 II 600 f/4GM + 1.4X TC ISO-3200 ISO-800 f/5.6 at 1/4000 sec Handheld. Click on the image to enlarge
Female Harrier take off, A1 II 600 f/4GM + 2X TC ISO-3200 ISO-1600 f/5.6 at 1/3200 sec Handheld. Click on the image to enlarge
Female Harrier take off, A1 II 600 f/4GM + 1.4X TC ISO-3200 ISO-640 f/5.6 at 1/4000 sec Handheld. Click on the image to enlarge
Improved AI AF
The A1 II beefs up the already excellent A1 AF in the AI department. The new AI chip’s neural network has been trained for a variety of subjects including birds, animal, inspect, human, car, train and airplane. Additionally there is an auto mode where the user can set the camera to look for any group of subjects that user can select, such as birds, animal and car, at the same time, if that’s what you desire. I can’t imagine how one would need AI to focus on such subject as a train, but hey it’s there, and maybe this is more for video usage where to user does not want to touch the camera while recording. Compare this to the A1 that is trained to only identify a human, animal or bird eye (but not the whole thing). The bird eye detection success depends on the type of the specie and whether it is perched or in flight. The A1 II appears to be more successful than the A1 for most species when the birds is perched or floating. For birds in flight both cameras seem to grab the eye for birds that are large, slow and often completely uninteresting like gulls, egrets, ravens… I did not notice the camera detecting the eye of a flying harrier against dry bushes for example, while it had no problem grabbing it when the same bird perched.
The overall bird detection-that is the whole bird-is certainly better in A1 II as the A1 does not even offer such a mode. I could often see the A1 II draw a frame around the whole bird indicating it has detected a bird, this can aid with holding focus on the bird when the background gets busy.
Overall the A1 II performed excellent when tracking the harrier against an awfully busy and contrast background, one example is provided in the video below. As I have mentioned before what distinguishes the Sony flagship AF compared to the competition is not necessary the prowess of detecting the subject but maintaining a stable and accurate focus on the bird as it flies erratically against a complex background. Soft frames in between tack sharp frames is a rare occurrence here and consistency is a given. Even when the camera is unable to detect the subject as a bird the good old zone AF (none tracking as I explain in my guide) can reliably and easily track the bird. Keep in mind that A1 itself is excellent in this regard and despite fewer subject detection modes, it can still nail shot after short, so do not expect a day and night difference as that is unrealistic.
Another area which A1 II brings in an improvement relative to the A1 is the AF customization, Users can now make their own AF patterns and disable/enable/toggle many AF features by press of a button. There are many ways to take advantage of this new customization. One example is one-touch tracking pattern enable/disable to switch between tracking and non-tracking mode of the same AF pattern. You can set the AF pattern to tracking zone for flight against uniform BG’s and then quickly switch to non-tracking if the birds flies over a varied BG.
Improved EVF
The A1 II has essentially the same 9.36 million dot 9.44m-Dot (~ 3 mega-pixel) micro-OLED display as the A1 and offers three refers rates, (standard : 60Hz, high : 120Hz and higher : 240Hz). Just like the A1 the EVF resolution drops as you go from 60Hz to 120Hz, and when selecting the 240Hz mode a large black border is places around the image area shrining the image size. Furthermore the EVF image quality drops when continuous focus tracking is engaged, this was noticeable in A1 most in standard and high modes. the image quality drop is in the form of aliasing and shimmering artifacts as if the pixels are rendered in groups as opposed to individually perhaps due to processing power being diverted for AF tracking. Although Sony never officially articulated and quantified this limitation for either camera, it claims the image quality has been improved in the high mode. Upon using the camera in the field I find this claim to be true although it is hard to quantify it. With the original A1 I was inclined to use the higher (240 Hz) mode all the time,. I found t the image to be a bit small but any drop in quality when AF tracking was engaged was hard to notice in the smaller image. With the A1 II I am more inclined to use the high mode most of the time as the drop in image quality is barely noticeable in most circumstances. The image is large and bright and overall more pleasing than the smaller image in the 240Hz mode. I wish in for the 240Hz mode to come with zero resolution drop in the future iterations.
Improved image stabilizer
The A1 II improves the sensor shift image stabilizer to improve sharpness at slow shutter speeds. The sensor shift stabilizer works well for shorter focal lengths but it is not sufficient for long focal lengths like 300mm and longer. The optical image stabilizer in the lens (OSS) works in tandem with the sensor shift to improve the overall performance. The original A1 left a lot to be desired in this department, compared to the competition. I found the stabilizer system was barely effective at 2 stops shooting with the 600 GM prime and the 300 GM prime lenses handheld. I must mention that image stabilizer is useless in improving sharpness when the subject itself is moving like wildlife, but it can be useful when shooting stationary scenes such as telephoto landscapes. The main usage of stabilizer for BIF is steadying the image in the viewfinder to aid with handheld panning at long focal lengths as I explain in my guide. To that end, the stabilizer system in the A1 was sufficient but yet a bit disappointing for making photographs at low shutter speeds. The A1 II seems to have improves quite a bit in this department and able to deliver a relatively high percentage of pixel sharp images at speeds around ~1/200 sec when hand holding the 600GM. At slower speeds with this combo handheld, the percentage of sharp shots starts to drop and of course this depends on the handholding technique and muscle strength of the photographer. Nevertheless this is a welcome improvement.
Better rear LCD screen
the A1 came with a 1,440,000 dot ( 480K pixel) 3″ rear LCD, the screen with was obsolete even in 2021, most modern cameras at this price boasting a 2.0 million dot or better screen. The screen was coarse and crunchy if viewed closely, the A1 II features a more modern 2,095,104 dot (~ 700K pixel) screen that looks much sharper and is also calibrated to DCI-P3 color space for accurate viewing. The new screen has a 4-axis tilt mechanism compared to the A1 where the screen can only tilt up or down. The A1 II screen can be folded facing inward to protect the screen when not in use. A brighter full OLED screen similar to the screens used in many smartphones would be desirable in a camera at this price but this appears to be overlooked by all the camera makers.
Better ergonomics and controls
The A1 II body is slightly chunkier than the A1, the grip is a bit deeper, in addition the camera offers an addition customizable function button on the front lacking in A1. The optional vertical grip is VG-EC5 is shared with the A9 III and it is also sculpted better and features additions dials and buttons.
Field impressions
I have been using the A1 II to photograph a variaty of subjects in the past two months, overall it performed brilliantly as expected. The most noticeable difference is in the pre-capture feature making it possible to nail those take off frames. There is AF improvements too when it comes to the subject indemnification, but more difficult to quantify the gains relative to the A1 which itself is almost perfect in my hands. Please watch the video on my YouTube Chanel to watch the more detailed review.
The image quality of the A1 II is indistinguishable from the A1, not surprising as they both use the same image sensor, below you can download 100% crops from RAW taken at different ISO side by side
A1 II vs. A1 RAW comparison
Click on the links below to download the test shots, 100% crop from RAW, processed with Capture One Pro with identical settings
The images below were made with the A1 and the combination of the FE 600mm F/4 GM with 1.4X and 2X TC, all images were made handheld and processed with C1P. Click on each image to enlarge to click on thisNorthern Harrier Gallery with Sony A1 II
Final thoughts
the A1 II is an evolution of an already excellent camera, it addresses most of the small short comings the original A1 had and it adds per capture feature that can make a significant difference for take off shots. The AF improvement both in terms of subject recognition and additional configurability are welcome. At the time of writing this review the A1 II is the most expensive camera in its class. But it offers a combination of resolution, speed and AF performance not matched elsewhere when it comes to photographing birds in flight. Its relative price is lower than the original A1 considering inflation. My only complaint is that at this price Sony should have included the optional vertical grip, which in my opinion, is a necessity for long shooting sessions, to avoid changing batteries too often. I highly recommend the A1 II for bird photographers.