Not being a camera guy, can someone explain to me why all these stats are awesome? I mean, they sound awesome, but I'm a sucker for people telling me things are awesome.
The professional camera industry is going through a paradigm shift. From SLRs (cameras with a mirrors that flap with each photo and make the unique clack sound) to Mirrorless. You needed the mirror during the film days, because you needed to see what the lens was seeing. Now, you can capture what the lens is seeing from the sensor into an electronic viewfinder.
However, there is still an opinion that an SLR (Nikon or Canon) is a real professional tool. From built quality, to focus speed (phase detect), frames/second, battery life, dual card capture, etc.
Sony's new A9 is designed to go head to head against the top of the line professional cameras from Nikon and Canon. At least on many of the specs.
That said, I'm still not convinced it's going to be as robust as a Nikon D5 or Canon's 1Dx, etc.
I'm a Nikon user now (was canon for a long time) and I abuse my camera a lot. From rain, extreme cold, etc. And the camera continues to work. Many of my photographer friends on FB are unhappy with reliability of the Sony's A7 series and switched back to Canon and Nikon due to reliability issues. So even though the A9 has all the specs, it may still not be the camera pros shooting Olympics, etc. switch to.
I also agree on reliability. I broke an A7 II after 5 months of mild usage. I don't think the sensor stabilization system is ready for pro usage
http://www.sonyalpharumors.com/sony-announces-the-new-100-40...
But yeah, they have a long way to go to match the lens offerings of Canon / Nikon.
Sports photographers need super fast continuous shooting so you can get 20 shots of that epic catch in one shutter press and choose the best one. Likewise 1/32,000th of a sec shutter speed is twice as fast as most cameras' 1/8,000th of a sec fastest shutter speed, which helps to freeze quick motion.
The high number of AF points is a sports feature too - one area that mirrorless still significantly lags traditional DSLRs is that their AF systems are not as fast as the type used in DSLRs, which have dedicated AF sensors (mirrorless does AF off the imaging sensor), so a ton of AF points is one way mirrorless tries to narrow the AF gap.
Heh, my Canon 600D's autofocus is EXTREMELY slow D:
Hmm, it should theoretically make wide angle lenses a bit cheaper because they won't have to use retrofocus designs. But I think the actual price of the lens is going to be determined by what pro photographers are used to paying for fancy wide angle lenses.
After autonomous cars will come autonomous cameras--the camera will be a better photographer than you are, so it won't need you to actually operate it. It'll just fly around on a drone. Have its own gallery shows. Win Pulitzers.