Sony A9 vs Canon 1Dxii vs Nikon D5 | Flagship Epic Shootout Review | Which Camera to Buy

This Epic Shootout was brought to you by The Maven Nation, Michael's entrepreneurial and productivity podcast, which airs every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on iTunes and your other favorite podcast networks. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 2017 Flagship Epic Shootout. I am Michael The Maven, and before we get into the specs, let me say thank you so much to B&H Photo for providing the Canon 1DX Mark II and the Nikon D5. Without B&H's support, we wouldn't be seeing these tests. Also have to say thank you so much to LensPro2Go for providing the most current 70-200 2.8 Nikon image stabilized lens. It's an amazing lens. I can't wait to get it involved in the sports tests. And let's dive into the specs right away. The Canon 1DX Mark II is the flagship DSLR of Canon. At the time of this recording, it's listing at $6,000. This is a top-of-the-line DSLR that we're seeing many, many professional sports shooters use. It's full frame, 20.2 megapixels. The 1DX Mark II can shoot from 14 to 16 frames per second, depending on whether or not you're in live view. It has a 3.2 inch, 1.6 million dot monitor. It can shoot 4K at 60 frames per second. It has 61 focusing points, 41 of which are cross type. It has dual pixel focusing for video, GPS, 120 frames per second at 360 megabits per second. The Nikon D5, at the time of this recording, is listed at $6,500. It is a 20.8 megapixel full frame sensor. It has a 3.2 inch, 2.36 million dot monitor. And it too can shoot 4K, though it's limited to 30 frames per second. It has 153 focusing points, 99 of which are cross type. And it is also capable at shooting very high frame rates, 12 frames per second. At the time of this recording, the Sony A9 is listed at $4,500. It features a 24.2 megapixel full frame image. It has a 3.7 million dot blackout free EVF. It too can shoot at 4K, again at 30 frames per second. It has 693 phase detection focusing points, which covers 93% of the viewfinder. Its back monitor is 3 inch at 1.4 million pixels. And the thing that everybody's freaking out over is that it shoots at a blistering 20 frames per second using a pass-through stack CMOS sensor. Very interesting technology. We've never seen anything like it before. We really want to know how it performs for high speed action photography. It also shoots great video, including 120 frames per second. And it also has five axis image stabilization. I think the question we're all asking is, can the new kid on the block stack up against the Canon and the Nikon Titans? In this epic shootout, we are using the most current 24 to 72.8 non-image stabilized lenses from each manufacturer. And we're also including the 70 to 200 2.8 image stabilized lenses, the very best from each manufacturer as well. Very excited to get the 70 to 200s involved in the sports shooting. My epic shootouts are intended to be educational and informative. If I say something about a camera that you might own that you don't like or you disagree with, I definitely open to constructive criticism. However, I also post all my methodology so you can see what I'm doing. I've made mistakes in the past. I'm willing to stand corrected. But the idea is to be as unbiased as possible and to let the data do the speaking. I will include my personal opinions and you're welcome to disagree with those as well. If you like my methodology and approach to camera testing, you're probably going to like the way I teach photography. So if you're a brand new photographer to a Canon, Nikon, or a Sony camera, definitely check out the huge collection of training videos I have for each of them. I have one for the Sony A9. I don't have one for the 1DX Mark II or the Nikon D5. Just about all the other ones in the last couple years. I pretty much have them and I'll put those links in the description. In any event, I love to start off with the focusing. We have a big focusing test down at the park, so let's go get started. We did many pre-sports focusing tests with the Sony A9 to find out if it had any weaknesses. As a side note, I used the flexible spot square, medium size, at about the same position as the D5 in the 1DX Mark II's furthest outside squares to try to get an apples to apples comparison. Here's what I can tell you. The A9 is fast and it also struggles most when zooming in during a high speed burst with the 70-200. Not as much when zooming out. It is specific to zooming in. The A9 had some inconsistent moments, both at the park and later at the raceway. Probably less than 5% of the time, it would just drop focus completely and miss many consecutive shots. These results were not included in the scores, but it did happen once during the test, so I had to repeat that round. For side-to-side focusing of a moving target with no racking of the zoom ring during the burst, the A9 scored a perfect 100%, with the 1DX Mark II a 98%, and the D5 a 100% as well. All great scores, but remember, the position of the focal plane is not changing much in this first test. For a forward moving subject into good light, each while zooming out as the subject approached the camera, the A9 scored a 73%, with the 1DX Mark II scoring a 93%, and the Nikon D5 scoring a 97%. This is where the A9 first starts to struggle. Nearly all of the 1DX misses came within that 10-12 feet range. The D5 was just about perfect at all distances. Because of the inconsistencies I saw on the A9 when racking the zoom ring, I decided to repeat this without the racked zoom, and it scored, strangely, a 74% as well. For a subject moving away into heavy backlight, the A9 scored a 57% with a racked zoom, and get this, a 97% without racking the zoom ring. This again confirmed what I initially observed, it's when we are zooming in, the A9 starts to struggle a little bit. The 1DX Mark II scored an 85%, and the Nikon D5 scored a near perfect 97%. Now because these are flagships, I also wanted to emphasize the frames per second and how important they are to capturing action. In the case of forward moving subjects, we had three rounds for each camera, with the runner covering the same distance at about the same speed. If we look at the number of keepers for each camera over those tests, the increased frames per second for both the Canon and the Sony resulted in more keeper shots despite shooting with lower focusing accuracy. This is something that the camera user will have to take into consideration. Do they want higher accuracy with lower frames per second, or do they want more keepers overall? A camera's buffer performance is how many shots it can take before it starts to slow down. This is a sports test we like to do just to see how many shots a photographer can get before the camera runs into its physical limitations of running to the memory card. So we're shooting on raw files only, I've capped the lens, so pretty much all the pictures are going to be completely black, autofocus is off, we've got a timer set up, and this is going to help me to calculate the right speed once the buffer fills. We can hear how fast those images are clearing. So I'm going to start the timer a split second before I start the shutter button. One, two, three. Something that's unique to the a9 between these three cameras is that once the buffer fills, if you try to come into the menu, it's going to lock you out. Just something to be aware of. You get the red light indicator, there's also a buffer indicator that you see sometimes pop up. There it goes, it's off. So almost a full minute to be able to get back into the menu. Something about the D5 is that it is capped off at 200 shots, so as soon as those first 200 shots end, I'm going to reinitiate the first to see if we can fill it up beyond those 200. I have a very fast XQD card in here. So again, we're going to start the timer a split second before we start the camera. I'll just let it run. There it goes. So you can hear that even when the buffer is full, it is clearing that memory card super fast. Ergonomically, let me point out a couple things. If we come into the menu here, no problem, we can access the menu and it's going to clear those memory cards super fast because of the XQD memory card. A few things I wanted to point out about the D5 was the ergonomics. Look at this. To get into the memory card, you just put your thumb in there and you push this button in, flips the door open. Very nice, very well thought out. So the 1DX Mark II shooting at 14 frames per second, super fast CFast card in it. Count of three, here we go. One, two, three. So the 1DX does eventually fill its buffer. We still got the red light here and see it's cleared already. Just a few seconds. So because it has that CFast card and because probably the pipeline speed, there aren't going to be many situations where you're shooting at full buffer strength over a minute. So let's summarize the strengths and weaknesses for each of these cameras for sports shooting. The Nikon D5 was amazing. It really surprised me. It is the best sports focusing camera I have ever used. It's the most accurate, but it also had the lowest frames per second out of the three. The 1DX Mark II was accurate and had a slightly higher frames per second at 14 frames per second with the deepest buffer in raw shooting I have ever seen. I can see why this is a favorite for many sports shooters. The Sony A9 has many advantages that are far beyond the other two, including greater focusing area coverage at 93%. It's the first electronic EVF that I've used with zero blackout, 60 frames per second refresh focusing rate, an incredible 20 frames per second, which is insane. It has a fantastic initial buffer and the stack sensor allows for this faster readout and electronic shutter mode and this resulted in better battery performance when shooting for stills. On the cons, we saw slower buffer clearing. I think this is card related, you know, maybe XQD card in the future Sony would be amazing. And it also locks us out from the menu while the buffering is clearing. In terms of the focusing, it was inconsistent when using the rack zoom ring during a burst, more so when zooming in than zooming out. And so this is about the A9 is it's really, really impressive in some areas. And it has a few minor drawbacks that we're not seeing with the other two. And I'm going to leave it up to you guys to decide which one you think is best. If you want Michael's opinion, I tend to gravitate more towards the 1DX Mark II or the D5 if I was shooting a paid professional sporting event. Those two cameras, they feel more consistent, they feel more polished, like a very mature product line. The Sony feels like a speed demon, cutting edge, high tech camera that can do amazing things. It doesn't quite have as much polish. And that's kind of where my opinion is. Can the A9 be used to shoot a sporting event? Yeah, if you had the right lenses for it, sure. And this is another negative right now with Sony who's making lenses as fast as anybody, is there aren't many telephoto primes at the time of this recording, but I have a feeling it's coming. And Canon and Nikon need to be terrified of what Sony is doing innovation wise. In my low light focusing test, I like to measure each camera's ability to focus between two high contrast targets, one illuminated at plus 6 EV and the other at negative 2 EV. I use the center focusing square and go back and forth for 30 repetitions timing how long it takes for each camera to lock focus for three rounds. The Canon 1DX Mark II scored an average of 54 seconds. The Nikon D5 scored an average of 62 seconds. And the Sony A9 scored an average of 50 seconds. Keep in mind, the A9 also has a focused assist lamp that was not used in this test. Many shooters are interested in the ability of each camera to track a moving subject while recording video. So we put them through the face tracking test and this is what we learned. The A9's face detection for video, once it's engaged, it's really good. It seems to have the edge when it comes to accuracy, smoothness, and speed and focusing. The 1DX Mark II's dual pixel autofocus is also astonishingly good. It just seemed to lose track of my model's face at a shorter distance, but once it locks on, the smoothness is impressive. One advantage the Canon has over the others is its touchscreen combined with how it moves its focus. It's just faster and smoother than the A9's when tapping on the LCD and this makes it super attractive for video work when pulling focus. The D5 can also track a face but you will notice that it goes through a focus reset, sometimes even when the subject isn't moving much. And I consider this to be undesirable for video work. I have to note that the A9 has an eye detection feature, which we've seen in other Sony cameras, that is astonishingly fast and accurate. If you're a portrait photographer who hasn't used this, it is absolutely a huge win, especially if you're shooting at wide apertures. In my dynamic range tests, I use something called a Stouffer wedge, which has 41 ND filters and it allows me to fire a strobe through it, measuring the ability of each camera to differentiate between one-third stop intervals. I then inspect for the point at which each border is no longer visible. I tested the raw files at ISO 100, 1600, and 6400 and present them here so you can come to your own conclusions. At ISO 100, I see the 1DX between 37 and 38, with the D5 and A9 between 35 and 36, all very comparable when it comes to shade differentiation. However, there are some small specific things to note with each. It seems the 1DX has slightly higher color noise. The D5 has what appears to be some banding, and the A9's compressed raw file is showing what is referred to as posterization. We've seen this in other Sony raw files. This is it right here. These green blocks next to the numbers, sometimes it's very common when you have highlights next to a dark shadow. For good measure, I looked at the uncompressed raw Sony files, which lost the posterization effect, but introduced other artifacts I am calling gifts, which are totally inexplicable. This red and blue is actually in the file, and I cannot explain where it's coming from, though it may be associated with my raw converter in Photoshop. At 1600, they're a little more comparable, with separation between 33 and 34 for the Canon, 34 and 35 for the Sony, 32 and 33 for the D5. I actually like the A9 here more, and the posterization effect seems to be broken up by the grain. At ISO 6400, again, very comparable with the separation at around 29 and 30 for each. So, as a follow-up to the dynamic range test, I decided to do a black cap raw test, and this is super easy for those of you who want to repeat it. Just put a black cap on your lens, ISO 400, take a raw file, turn your exposure, shadows, and black sliders all the way up in raw. Now, this is something that you would never really do in raw processing, but if there's any defects in the sensor in terms of capturing an image, sometimes we can see it in the form of banding. The A9 is super clean, by far the best. Not sure what's going on in the corners here, I honestly have no idea what these guys are. The 1DX Mark II has some horizontal banding, and the D5 has both horizontal and vertical banding. The important question is how does this translate into real world editing? Take a look at this tree that I photographed with each camera, specifically the bark, and what happens when I edit each of them to pull the shadows out. The D5 is showing some strange noise and banding coming in from the ocean here. I don't know how this is working. 1DX II looks reasonable, and the A9 looks good in terms of banding, but I sometimes see these other artifacts like this. So, I'm going to leave the decision up to you. The dynamic range of each camera is actually pretty comparable. The 1DX Mark II looks really consistent, but I don't see any banding in the A9. I would probably choose between either of those two if I had to choose a winner for dynamic range. You're welcome to look at the data, come to your own conclusions. I like to do an ISO ramp test on portraits to measure each camera's ability to produce sharp images at increasing high ISO JPEGs, measuring the camera's processing in noise reduction. The images are a standard final JPEG, but we zoom in at 300%, which is far beyond the standard sharpness of 100%. The results were very telling. The A9, whatever it's doing, it could be the new sensor, it looks really, really good. As we increase the ISO, they all get a little bit softer, but the A9 seems to maintain something. It has a slight edge. I think they're all usable at 12,800, but the A9 still stands out, and I would have to give it the win for high ISO, noise performance, and a JPEG portrait. When we do video recording of candles in a dark room, each of the cameras are pretty comparable up to 6400, but watch what happens at 12,800. The Sony immediately pulls ahead with the D5 close behind it. Even at 25,600, 51,200, and the insane 102,400, the Sony is going strong. This isn't even a contest. Just wow. Huge win for the Sony in the candle ISO performance video tests, but candles are one thing. What about color noise? Again, at 6400, the 1DX and the D5 look fine, even with YouTube compression. Very few dancing swatches. I think 12,800 would be the limit for me. It's just a little bit too much, but look at the A9. It's looking really strong at 12,800. It's usable. Several tests now are leading me to conclude that the stacked CMOS sensor that we're seeing in the A9 has a minimum of at least one full-stop advantage when shooting for video, as far as ISO noise goes. If you're looking for a low-light video camera, I think the A9 gets the win. I have a wonderful lion shirt that does a great job in finding camera issues with moiré. I saw moiré in all three cameras, so I'm going to show them here and let you come to your conclusions, but it seemed minimal in the A9. However, by the time this is exported and uploaded to YouTube and compression, a lot of this is broken up. I use a forward-looking infrared radar device to measure the heat signatures of each camera after 20 minutes of 4k video recording. There have been some reports of the A9 overheating, so I thought I'd take a look. After 20 minutes, the Canon 1DX Mark II had a heat signature of 93 degrees Fahrenheit. The Sony A9 had a heat signature of 93 degrees Fahrenheit, and the Nikon had a heat signature also of about 93 degrees Fahrenheit as well. I have not encountered a single A9 overheating issue in my tests, though keep in mind I was testing in controlled environment with my IBIS turned off on a tripod. Rolling shutter is a warpy effect that can be seen when panning the camera left and right. This is where vertical subjects such as a light stand start to act like jello. The A9's stack CMOS sensor with full sensor readout is for stills. All three cameras show the jello effect, but seeing this jello effect suggests that the A9's video recording still may be line by line, otherwise this doesn't make any sense. Before we get into the real world video shooting, let's talk a few specs. If bitrate is important to you, which it should be, it's no contest. The 1DX Mark II is capable of up to 800 megabits per second in its 4k 60 frames per second mode, about 500 megabits per second at 30 frames per second, and 360 megabits per second in its 1080 120 frame per second high speed mode. It also does internal 8-bit 422 chroma subsampling. Neither of the other cameras can touch that. It uses an older MJPEG codec which creates ginormous file sizes. Seriously, they're ridiculous. But again, if bitrate and color information are important to you, you will understand this trade-off. Now, I do wish Canon had a more efficient inter-frame codec for 4k, but alas, they do not. 4k on the 1DX Mark II is a 1.3 crop that might turn off some videographers, but traditional filmmakers will not have an issue with it. Sony's A9, however, breaks new ground. At 24 frames per second, it oversamples at 6k and resizes down to 4k without line skipping or pixel binning. This is going to produce a cleaner image at full frame. It's never been done in a camera in this price range. We have seen this gives fantastic low-light ISO performance, as well as wider shooting because there's no crop, and you will notice it gives a more shallow depth of field. Now, on the Sony A9, its bitrate caps out at 100 megabits per second, but it uses a more efficient compression which allows for smaller file sizes. Something that is important to note about the A9 is its IBIS, which will allow for handheld video shooting in many situations where the 1DX Mark II and the D5 rely on the IS of the lenses. So keep that in mind with A9. It's the only one of these cameras that has an internal image stabilization. The D5 shoots 4k at a crop factor of 1.5x, and it has a data rate of about 125 megabits per second. Something that I noticed is the D5 overexposes about two-thirds of a stop, so in order to get a good match with the other two, I had to constantly make this adjustment. When we look at the actual video quality, there are a few important differences. Take, for example, these beat shots. I thought for the most part, all three cameras were comparable with some differences in color, but when we get into the shade, I like the tree bark detail more on the Sony. The blacks seem a little bit crushed on the Canon. Another thing I noticed time and again was the A9 seemed to have much more shallow depth of field as we saw in the sunflower shots, probably because it's using a much larger recording area. When we compare the A9 with the D5, I see a lot more sharpness and detail in the branches of the tree. The A9 just looks cleaner to me. I think the video on the D5 is fine, but it's lacking the killer features and quality that we're seeing on the other two, and this leaves us with the 1DX Mark II and the A9, and this is what it comes down to for me. If you do lots of color grading, I think the 1DX Mark II is your only choice out of the three. If you want full frame video without a crop, in-body image stabilization, and incredible ISO performance, go with the Sony. Grab a pen and a piece of paper and list it from 1 to 12, and then draw three columns and label them A, B, and C at the top. Pause the video as needed. I'm going to show you 12 sets of images, and what I want you to do is to score each set and write a number appropriate for the column of each image. So the far left image is A, the middle image is B, and the last is C. Give a score of three to the best or the most preferred image. Give a score of two for second place, and give a score of one for the worst of the three, and at the end we'll add the scores to discover which camera's color science you prefer most. Don't give it too much thought. Find your favorite, give it a three, find your next favorite, give it a two, and then write one in the column representing the last. I did my very best to take a picture of the same model, in the same lighting conditions, with the same white balance, in the same exposure settings. We have also intentionally mixed up the images so they are in random positions with each set. This is the portrait image quality test, and by not knowing which camera took which image, it forces us to judge by image quality only. So, are you guys ready for the answers? Here they are. Label the camera next to each score, and then add up the total points, and you will know real quick which camera's image quality you prefer the most. When we're talking about the ergonomics of each camera, there are some very important distinctions when we're talking about high-end professional sports shooting cameras, and that's the weight of the camera. You'll notice that both the 1DX and the D5, they have a vertical grip built in to the camera. 3.3 pounds on the 1DX, 3.1 pounds on the D5. Significantly heavier than about 1.5 pounds on the Alpha 9, and this has to do with the balance when using very large telephoto lenses. A lot of prime lenses, a lot of zoom lenses, some of them can be really big and heavy, and that is something that's going to come down to personal preference. I think the professional sports shooters who have been shooting for a long time with the heavier camera, they're going to notice the difference. Ergonomically, it's not bad. I got my pinky missing underneath. There is a grip that you can get. It's an additional like 350 bucks, but definitely lighter, definitely smaller, depending on the lens that you're using, as always. But just some of the ergonomics, I think the grips are more comfortable on the Canon and the Nikon. Just one man's opinion. I definitely wish we had more interactive touchscreen monitors when we're talking about the ease of use for all three cameras. So as you can see, my hair has grown out. It's been almost five weeks now since the beginning of the tests of this epic shootout, and I'm ready to give you my thoughts and conclusions. If you guys enjoy what you're seeing and the amount of hard work and effort that I put into the quality, quality is very important to me than spitting out all these quick, fast, easy videos. You're going to love the way that I teach. I have many samples of my teaching methodology on YouTube, so you can check it out. We have almost 50 crash course videos on cameras, lighting, speed lights, Photoshop, advanced techniques. We even have a course on business. They ship worldwide and come with a 100% money back guarantee. We'll have one on the A9 coming shortly, but let me give you my thoughts about the cameras. When I first started this test, I thought we were going to be comparing three apples, and I'm convinced now that is not the case. So when we look at the 1DX Mark II and the Nikon D5, you can see that the look, the feel, the build quality, the button layout, their performance, they're very comparable. And I see these as two different flavored apples. You're getting something a little bit different with each one. Let's talk about the D5 first. Incredible focusing systems. If I was going to give this a strength over the other two, not only is it better than these two cameras, it's the best focusing camera I have ever used, I have ever tested. It wins all the epic shootouts. It is that good. It just doesn't miss, and I was very impressed with it. The D5 is a very polished, very well thought out in terms of the ergonomics and the usability. It was the most enjoyable camera, in my opinion, to use. I think if you're shooting very long, like at a sporting event, you know, many hours with a heavy lens, this is going to have some real advantages. The dual XQD card slots, brilliant idea, and this is what I think these cameras deserve. Two super high fast memory cards. And obviously, if you're coming from a Nikon background, this is going to be the sports shooting camera for you. A little bit more expensive, $6,500. Not a huge deal if you're in this camera price range. When we're talking about the weaknesses of the D5 compared to the other two cameras, I think we can all agree it is in the video features. Even Nikon has come out and said it wasn't really intended as a heavy video camera. And the video is okay. It has a 1.5x crop factor, 125 megabits per second in its data rate. It's just missing some of the other features that we're seeing in these two cameras, such as 4k 60 frames per second in the Canon. We're not seeing a high frame rate video. We're not seeing the 422 chroma subsampling that we see in the 1DX Mark II. And for a flagship of this magnitude, this is where I would put the negatives. However, if you are something like a wedding photographer, or somebody who's very concerned with the workflow, and you want your shots to be precise, there's no better camera. In my opinion, it is the best. Paired with the 70-200mm lens, which is an amazing lens, I'll have another video coming on that, you are going to be one happy camper. I'm probably going to get the D850, and I'll be a Nikon shooter coming up as soon as it's released, because I'm so fascinated about full-frame Nikon with that lens. A little bit bigger and heavier than what I need for my shooting purposes, but yeah, it makes sense. If you're a Nikon sport shooter, you're going to be very happy with this. I think it would pair very nicely with the D500 between those two. When we're looking at the Canon 1DX Mark II, this is a beautiful camera. When I first got it, I just wanted to hold and cuddle it for a little bit. The Canon has some distinct advantages. I think the color science in Canon is better in terms of reds and flesh tones. That's just me, my opinion. This is what I consider a perfect camera in terms of well-roundedness. It's a camera that can do everything very well. The focusing systems, as mentioned, were better on the D5. The 1DX Mark II were right there. It struggled in those places that I mentioned, but the thing that really stands out about the 1DX Mark II are the video features. Canon did not hold back. You got 4k 60 frames per second at 800 megabits per second. We have 120 frames per second at 1080. That's 360 megabits per second. The touch monitor with the dual pixel autofocus is incredible. I think it wins in terms of usability, and there are tons of features I'm not even talking about. I'm talking about the main ones. I think the raw files are a little bit more, what's the word, they didn't have as many problems as we saw in some of the other files that I'm not really sure about. The dynamic range was outstanding. This is a wonderful, all-around camera. I can understand why NFL shooters use it so much. Portrait wedding photographers, very hard to find a negative with the 1DX Mark II, but if I was going to be really nitpicky I would say that I wish it had some other options in terms of more efficient video codecs. The MJPEG is a very old codec. The file sizes are incredibly huge, which as a videographer who's set up for it it's not that big of a deal, but there are times where you know I want to do a quick 4k video that I might post to YouTube, well I don't want a 20 gigabyte file for a couple minutes, and so that's one negative, but overall it's the most perfect camera I've ever used. OK, just flat out. 14 frames per second in its burst mode, incredible buffer depth, I've never seen anything like it, and if you own the 1DX Mark II you, wow, congratulations, you have a beautiful camera. I'm very tempted to make this mine myself. When we're talking about the Sony a9 I really don't put it in the same class as the other flagships. We've got two apples and an orange. This is a completely different class of camera, and I know many of you have come wondering if it is better than these amazing flagships, and in many ways I do believe it absolutely is. I believe it's cutting edge, it has some rough edges, when we're talking about the strengths it's where it matters most. I feel like Sony is watching my epic shootouts. I don't think I'm so much on their radar, they've never contacted me, they've never invited me to one of their tests, but at the a7R II epic shootout there were many things that I listed that I had problems with on the a7R II. The viewfinder would black out, we need a touch monitor, we want a joystick, the battery life is short, all those things were fixed in the a9, so Sony is listening to their customers, they're innovating, and they're really going to start pushing Canon and Nikon. The strengths of the a9 where it really matters are in the sensor design. It's revolutionary, we haven't seen it in any other camera, 24 megapixels, a stacked CMOS full frame readout that allows for 20 frames per second in an electronic mode that has minimal rolling shutter. That is incredible, it is a game changer absolutely in my opinion. Some other things about the sensor that we're not getting a lot of feedback about is the video features. This is a great video camera even though Sony has said no it wasn't really meant to be a video camera. The thing that's very intriguing about it is that this is a full frame with no crop for video. Okay so 35 millimeter, no crop, 6k oversampling down to 4k, to the best of my knowledge that has not been done in a camera in this price range. So I believe that is very important and when we looked at things like the ISO performance for video, the video tracking was very good as it always is, the face detection, yeah this is a really amazing camera. There are some other things about it that are great like the autofocus coverage area, far better than the other cameras. I think there's more clusters and more options on the Sony in terms of the focusing squares. Tilting monitor, doesn't sound like a big deal but when you're shooting with camera every day it is. The eye detection on all Sony cameras, we've seen it on the a6500, a6300, a7R II, a7S II, is we're seeing this eye detection that's really really good. So if you're a portrait photographer you are really going to benefit from not needing to get a focus lock and recomposing. So you can shoot at very shallow depths of field and things of that nature. So let's talk about some of these rough edges that we saw that you should definitely be aware of if you're considering an a9. When we rack zoom in during a burst I did see that it dropped focus. This was something that could repeat and occasionally every once in a while it would just drop focus unexplicably. So not as consistent, not as polished as the flagships in terms of focusing, but it's shooting so many frames it really makes up for it in my opinion. I wasn't a huge fan of how it locked us out of the menu while the buffer was writing to the memory card. You can still shoot, you're just locked out of the menu. I thought that was a really weird thing, probably something that can be fixed. Not a huge fan of the UHS-II cards. I think it, well it has one UHS-II card slot, one UHS-I slot, but I really think this would have benefited, the a9 would have benefited from XQD cards, dual, and I think that will come. The biggest negative however about the Sony is it doesn't have the lens lineup to support professional sports shooting. That's the biggest negative at this time. Sony just announced a 400 2.8 telephoto prime. As fast as you can make those lenses, Sony, because as soon as you do, you are going to be an incredible company in terms of sports shooting, and I think Sony has put Canon and Nikon on notice. The Sony a9, I feel this fits my style of shooting the most, and I'm not shooting professional sporting events like some people who need the size and the weight for the balance, things of that nature. Very intrigued with it even still, and I'll continue to do some testing on it. Let me say a huge thank you to B&H Photo for supplying the D5 and the 1DX Mark II. We wouldn't see this epic shootout without them. If you guys decide to buy any gear from B&H, definitely use the links in the description. I get a few pennies on the dollar. It definitely helps me with the expense of producing these videos. They're very expensive. It would shock you how much time and money they cost. A huge thank you to LensPro2Go for supplying the Nikon 70-200 FL-ED 2.8. I think it's the best 70-200 out there. That's another video coming, but I want to say thank you guys so much for all of your support over the years. I really, truly appreciate it. This marks the 10th year I have been a full-time camera reviewer and photography instructor, so it means so much to me that I've had the support of many of you out there. Thank you so much. I hope you guys have a great day, and I will see you next time. If you found this video helpful, you might be interested in one of my many crash course tutorial training videos on cameras and advanced techniques. They come with a 100% money-back guarantee, and I'll put those links in the description. Thanks again!