A year shooting weddings with the Sony A9 III – thoughts and reflections
Introduction:
The Sony A9III is in a different league. It’s the first time in 7 years that Sony has given documentary wedding photographers a worthy upgrade to the original A9. Like most wedding photographers, I didn’t jump over to the A9II – it was such a modest ‘upgrade’ over the original A9 it didn’t justify the spend.
I’ve owned a Sony A9III for over a year and have shot over 20 weddings with it so far.
In this article, I will outline the main benefits the camera has brought to my business compared to the A9 after a year of continuous use. But before I do that, I wanted to share how I became a professional wedding photographer and why I shoot with Sony.
How did I become a wedding photographer?
My wife and I were planning an American road trip, and we found out my wife was pregnant. I thought this could be the last big holiday for a while! So I wanted to make the most of it and get a decent camera in the hope of taking some good photos.
After my daughter was born, I had a good reason to keep shooting. I enjoyed being able to gift family members with prints of photos on occasions throughout the year. My family noticed that I was getting better, and in 201,7 my sister-in-law invited me to shoot her wedding. No pressure. I loved shooting her wedding and I began dreaming about being a full-time photographer.
By 2019, I had shot a total of 10 weddings. I went through our finances with my wife, and she gave me the push that I needed. We had a buffer to see us through while I was starting out, and we decided to give it a shot. I left my day job at the end of 2019, and I now photograph Nottinghamshire weddings, Derbyshire weddings and weddings in Leicestershire as well as the wider UK. I also provide commercial photography in Nottingham and family photography in Nottingham, and I run a documentary wedding photography workshop
Why did I switch to Sony, and why the A9 series camera?
I view the gear I take to each wedding not just as tools, but as an extension of my craft. The camera that I use needs to make me want to shoot, love doing so, and not pose a barrier to creativity.
With that in mind, I moved from using Nikon DSLRs to Sony in 2020 (I was using a D3s). Sony’s full-frame mirrorless systems offered so many new features over my DSLR, that I knew it would improve my photography and make shooting even more enjoyable. It was game-changing.
The following made moving to mirrorless a must for me:
- The ability to see my depth of field and exposure in real-time meant that I wouldn’t need to ‘chimp’ and take test exposures, which all slowed me down while shooting.
- The ability to place my focus point almost anywhere in the frame and being free to compose shots that weren’t at eye level using the LCD with the tilting screen opened up many more compositional choices for me. (with a DSLR, autofocus coverage was much more limited across the frame, and you’d always have to use the viewfinder to compose your shots, meaning that if you wanted to shoot down low or from up high, you’d need to get your eye to the same level)
- Autofocus accuracy and consistency when shooting with fast glass. This allowed me to use fast glass and be confident that the focus would nail every time.
Of course, all these benefits could be found in Nikon’s mirrorless offering at the time in the Z6. However, the deal breaker with this camera was the single-card slot, and that wasn’t resolved until the release of the Z6 II in late 2020.
Crucially, Sony was the first to market a full-frame mirrorless camera suited to professional use. This meant that, at the time of switching, there was a decent second-hand market and a good range of lenses from which to choose because Sony chose to open to mount so that third parties could manufacture lenses for its system. Taken together, lens choice and the lower cost of making a switch made it very easy to opt for a Sony system.
So why did I not get a Sony A7 III?
The thing that I fell in love with in the a9 was silent shooting. As a documentary wedding photographer, once you’ve tried that, there’s no going back! I can now shoot a church wedding ceremony without the vicar batting an eyelid, which is a BIG plus.
Why did I upgrade to the Sony A9 III
Simply put, the Sony A9 III is the first time Sony has offered a serious upgrade to the original A9.
I will outline this camera’s features now and comment on how they have helped me as a photographer.
Huge Ergonomic Improvements
These come from the body design and the new LCD and viewfinder
Body Design
Improved Grip
The body design is better in every regard – the grip is deeper and wider, the buttons and shutter feel better to operate, the dials lock that didn’t previously, there’s an additional custom button, and the weather sealing is more robust. I will discuss each in turn.
Due to the well-known ‘pinky problem’, I needed to bolt on an adapter to the base of my A9 so that I could grip the body with all my fingers. The new body is wider, so all my fingers wrap around the grip nicely. Doing away with a grip extender makes the Sony A9III feel lighter, and it makes changing the battery quicker (most of the body grips on the market obstruct the battery compartment n;t therefore, to access the battery, the grip must first be removed). The grip is also deeper, allowing me the get a much better purchase on the body, so it feels more secure in my hand.
Improved buttons
Larger buttons with more travel to them are a welcome addition, making the experience of using the camera much more tactile. This is particularly good if ever you need to wear gloves while shooting (which I have when shooting in the snow), you can still feel the buttons. I’d have a much harder time shooting on the A9 in cold conditions because the buttons are almost flush with the body if I’m wearing gloves. A bigger joystick makes it easier to move focus points, too.
The new positioning of the buttons makes the camera feel much more comfortable, too. They sit more neatly under my finger, and the shutter button placement is much improved; it’s angled such that it reduces the amount of rotation of my wrist needed to perform to hit it (in the A9, the shutter is almost on top of the body).
I also like that I can map all my go-to settings to be under my fingertips by assigning functions to the custom buttons. You could do this on the original A9, but the Sony A9 III gives you one extra custom button (c5). This becomes especially useful if you aren’t shooting with Sony lenses (most Sony lenses have a button you can customise on them).
One thing that used to irritate me in the A9 was that the exposure compensation dial didn’t have a lock on it. I can’t tell you have many times that dial gets accidentally knocked while I’m shooting. The A9III has a lock on the exposure compensation dial (like the A9II).
Better Weather-sealing
The camera is much better weather-sealed. In the previous edition, the card slot was closed via a flap that clipped into place. To close this one, you need to slide it closed. Difficult to see what I mean, but it feels much more secure and better protected from water ingress.
Taken in isolation, each improvement is marginal. However, because there are so many improvements, the sum of them makes for a much more ergonomic experience of using the camera as a whole. Intact, besides global shutter, it’s the second reason why it’s worth the upgrade in my view.
Vastly Better LCD
The screen is 0.2” longer at 3.20″. This doesn’t look like much on paper, but because screens are measured on the diameter, the area of the screen has gone up from 3.84” square to, 4.37” square, which is a 13.8 % increase in viewing area. Again, this seems marginal on paper, however, the screen appears noticeably larger.
The screen also has a 69% increase in resolution (from 374,000 dpi to 540,046 dpi), so images on the LCD are much crisper.
Together, these two improvements make the screen much easier to work with based on how I shoot. I often don’t shoot at eye level, so I use the LCD to compose my photos using the touchscreen.
Therefore, being able to see the screen more clearly when the camera is held at arm’s length helps to reduce eyestrain and improve my composition because I can more clearly see the edges of the frame.
Vastly Better Viewfinder
3686k dot electronic viewfinder has been replaced by a 9440k dot electronic viewfinder, and the viewfinder magnification is enhanced too (0.9x vs 0.78x).
What does this mean in practice? It’s like night and day in terms of viewing clarity. Sony A9III’s viewfinder is much more immersive, and it’s just plain easier to work with.
I still don’t understand why the A9 II offered no improvement in the LCD or viewfinder over the A9.
The net effect of the improvements in LCD and viewfinder is that my eyes feel less fatigued after hours of continuous shooting at a wedding.
How have the ergonomic improvements helped my business?
Reduced fatigue and a more comfortable user experience on long days
The sum of the improvements to body design, EVF and viewfinder makes a huge difference when it comes to shooting with the camera for 10 hours at a wedding by helping to reduce eye fatigue, and if I’m less fatigued, I feel more alert to capture goings on.
Global Shutter – No More Banding
An article on the Sony A9 III wouldn’t be complete without commenting on the global shutter. There was so much hype about it upon release. But how does it stack up in the wedding space?
It’s awesome.
Artificial LEDs are most often used to light indoor ceremonies at wedding venues across the land, and they can be a nightmare because they produce banding across the sensor, which can wreck your photos. This problem can be dampened at best through the choice of shutter speed, but it cannot entirely be eliminated.
The revolutionary global shutter eliminates this problem. Since the whole sensor is instantly read out (as opposed to being sequentially scanned) the sensor does not capture instances where the intermittent light source cycles on and off while the sensor is being read. Therefore, you don’t get banding appearing in your images. You get slight exposure variances between frames, but not variances in exposure within the frame.
How has Global Shutter improved my business and photography?
Improved workflow
With the Sony A9III, I no longer need to cull my images based on where the bands have appeared in my images,s and secondly, I don’t need to apply corrective measures in post-production to every image where banding is a problem. As a wedding photographer who shoots around 200k frames a year and delivers thousands of images each year, the time savings during culling and editing add up.
Improved confidence in shooting and fewer missed moments with the Sony A9 III
I no longer need to perform test shots to determine the banding situation in a room. I can happily walk into any room and concentrate on shooting – my attention is not taken away from making observations at the wedding while I’m trying to problem-solve the lighting by trial and error. The benefit is that I’m less likely to miss the smaller moments.
My favourite feature in the Sony A9 III
One thing that I cannot now imagine living without is the Sony A9III pre-capture function. You can set the camera to start capturing and buffering images before you press the shutter.
If I’m anticipating a moment but I don’t know when it will happen, if I activate pre-capture, I can be sure that I won’t miss it by being fractionally late on the trigger – the camera would have stored several frames before releasing the shutter. It makes me less reliant on timing my shots and allows me to get the shots I want without leaving it to chance.
How does this work in practice at a wedding? The most obvious place is the first kiss. It adds an extra level of safety to ensure you get it nailed. Most couples expect this shot, and I’m not alone in admitting that I’ve missed it before, because it sometimes can happen very quickly, like a peck on the cheek that’s over in a fraction of a second.
I use it often enough to assign this function to one of my custom buttons.
Other features in the Sony A9III that I like
Sensor protection
When the camera is powered off, a protective shutter closes over the sensor. This is a welcome addition. This means that when I change lenses in the field, I’m far less likely to get environmental debris on the sensor because the sensor is no longer exposed.
Dual card slots with XCII
The camera now has dual UHS-II SD card slots, so you can finally benefit from using SD cards with faster write speeds. In the Sony A9 only one of the two card slots was UHS-II compatible, which always baffled me because if you are recording to both cards simultaneously, write speeds were always limited by the slower card. This can slow down shooting.
For example, I might have blasted the confetti run, and the camera will show that it’s still writing frames to the card well after the confetti has finished. In the A9III, scores of frames get saved instantly, so I can continue shooting the action without thinking about hitting the buffer.
Updated Menu system
It has the updated menu system, which, compared to the A9, is much more intuitive to navigate; it’s just easier to find stuff on the go. I still shoot my A9 alongside my A9 III, and I find that if I need to go into the menu, it’s a faff compared to the newer menu.
Comments on the use of the Sony A9 III with the flash
Flash is not something I use much at weddings, but one great thing is that no extra settings need to be changed to use it. I don’t need a custom memory recall to turn the electronic shutter off, along with other changes.
Redundant feature: 120 frames / second ???
One feature, besides global shutter, that photographers were going wild about was the option to shoot 120 frames / second. I can’t comment on how useful this is in a wedding setting because I never even tried it. I just can’t see the point. Action at a wedding is not so fast as to warrant that amount of silliness. But, maybe I’m missing something?
One feature I wish the Sony A9 III had
Display on top of the body
I wish the Sony A9 III had a screen on top of the body that displayed your exposure settings. It’s the one thing that I miss the most about my Nikon (Canon has this feature too). Being able to quickly glance at the body and see what my exposure settings are without having to look at the LCS or viewfinder is a big plus for me.
SUMMARY
In summary, the Sony A9 III is a worthy upgrade to the Sony A9. It’s helped make shooting more enjoyable for me and more comfortable during extended use, and it’s improved my editing workflow.
If you liked this article and want to learn more about wedding photography, check out my wedding photography workshop