Sony Alpha α1: Powerful new full-frame mirrorless flagship

The Sony Alpha α1 is a 50MP camera that shoots 30fps bursts and 8K video, making it a serious contender on both the stills and video arenas.

It pioneers exciting new features such as combining resolution and speed in a relatively small 737g body that looks similar to the α9 II. The stacked CMOS sensor together with a pair of Bionz XR processors means that you can shoot JPEG photos at 30fps when using the electronic shutter. Mechanical shutter shooting drops to 10fps.

Even with AF/AE tracking enabled, the α1 can shoot at 30fps, which means shooting 164 jpegs or 155 raw images continuously. And you’ll get a black-out free view of your images thanks to a 9.44-million dot resolution OLED electronic viewfinder with 90x magnification and double refresh rate of 240fps. With the addition of Real-time Eye AF for birds, you can also for the first time accurately track and focus on birds’ eyes.

The α1 is also extremely capable video tool with 8K30p video shooting and similar heat dissipation to the Sony α7S III. You can record 8.6K oversampled video at up to 30fps. 8K video is recorded in 10-bit 4:2:0 XAVC HS format via HDMI. The α1 also supports high frame-rate internal 4K movie recording at up to 120fps, for smooth, expressive slow-motion playback at up to 5x. 10-bit 4:2:2 chroma subsampling can be used with Long-GOP or Intra (All-I) compression for outstanding image quality, while the new image sensor and BIONZ XR engine minimise image distortion.

Focused on supporting a professional workflow, the A1 includes Dual CFexpress Type A card slots (also accepts UHS-II SD cards), built-in dual-band Wi-Fi and many ports for effortless connections: Powered over USB, the USB 3.2 Type-C connector can provide a transfer speed of up to 10Gbps transfer speeds. An HDMI port, mic/headphone ports, a USB Micro port, a flash sync terminal, and a 1000BASE-T Ethernet port for wired LAN transfer.

The Sony Alpha α1 is ideal for professional action, nature and event/news photographers alike and although this has not yet been confirmed, it should become available from March 2021. Until then, you’re welcome to sign up to our preorder list so that we can let you know when stock has arrived.