SONY ALPHA 1

Staggering specs – and a pretty staggering price

- Rod Lawton

If we were to list every key feature of the Sony Alpha 1, this would be a book, not a camera review. First, it has a 50.1-megapixel stacked CMOS back-illuminated gapless sensor with separate pixel and circuit layers, hooked up to a Bionz XR processor with eight times the power of the previous version. This doesn’t just improve the performance and the image quality, but the responsiveness of the camera itself.

Key features

If 50.1 megapixels isn’t enough, there’s also a 199MP pixel-shift Multi-Shot mode that merges up to 16 separate images taken in succession; this is designed for static subjects, with the camera mounted on a tripod.

The A1 has a sensitivity range of ISO100-32,000, expandable to ISO50102,400; Sony says it can capture a dynamic range of up to 15 stops.

The resolution may not be the highest available for a full-frame camera (it’s beaten by Sony’s own Alpha 7R IV), but it is the second-highest, and it’s all the more impressive in light of the A1’s formidable video and continuous shooting capabilities.

Video-wise, the Alpha 1 is the first consumer mirrorless camera after the Canon EOS R5 to capture 8K video; not only that, it can capture 4K video at up to 120fps. Footage can be saved to dual CFexpress Type A/SDXC card slots as 10-bit 4:2:0 footage or saved as 16-bit raw via HDMI.

Sony says the A1’s passive heat dissipation system allows up to 30 minutes of 8K 30p recording, which is a big improvement over the Canon R5 (though the R5’s recording time has subsequently been improved with a firmware update).