Competition

This post was originally published on January 26, 2021 and has been lightly edited and resurrected here.

Todays announcement from Sony of their new flagship, the Alpha 1, on paper, raises the bar by some measure for mirrorless full frame camera (price being no bar of course). 50MP sensor, 15-stops of (claimed) dynamic range, 30fps lossy compressed RAW, 20fps RAW(!), 120 AF calculations per second(!), 1/200s sensor readout(!), 240fps EVF(!). As a bird photographer, these are specs to die for (again I have to insert the caveat that this is on paper, but given the A9 and A9ii, Sony certainly has credibility).

How did we get here? ^[1]

Till the end of 2016, for nearly a decade, Nikon and Canon were trading blows in the DLSR market. Each of their flagships were timed closely with major sporting events like the Summer/Winter Olympics. The competition between the two stalwarts was that of parity - one announced a flagship and the other matched it. This technology (mostly in the space of autofocus) then slowly trickled down to other models in the lineup.

In early 2017, we had the Nikon D5 and the Canon 1DXii ruling the roost. Both are comparable DSLRs with high frame rates (12fps vs 14fps), similar pixel counts (roughly 20MP) and high ISO performance. Mirrorless cameras were not really on the same level as DSLRs in terms of speed, autofocus tracking, viewfinder quality, frame rates and weather sealing. It was in April of that year that Sony released the A9 which immediately brought the Japanese giant into the game. With 20-fps shooting, stellar autofocus capabilities and a black-out free shooting experience it exceeded the DLSR flagships in key areas. It was clear (even before the A9) that mirrorless was the future. The Sony A9 materialized that future.

It took a year and a half for Nikon and Canon to pivot to mirrorless. In August 2018 Nikon and Canon released their first full-frame mirrorless bodies - the Z7, Z6, EOS R. These bodies however were DSLR equivalents (of the D850 and D750 on the Nikon side) in terms of their sensors, regressed in several key areas (autofocus tracking, speed) and did not bring anything new to the table ^[2].

Sony was still the king of mirrorless flagships and they maintained their lead with the next generation - the Sony A9ii announced a year later in October 2019. With Nikon and Canon still playing catchup in this space, Sony really didn't have to focus on the technology side of the camera - most improvements were in ergonomics (deeper grip, heftier body) and refinements (better weather sealing, improved menu). The sensor, its autofocus capabilities, frame rates all stayed the same.

Competition matters.

Jump another year to July 2020 and Canon announced its EOS R5. This was a significant jump forward for Canon over their previous generation and also over the Sony A9ii. While the R5 and the A9ii are evenly matched in frame-rate and autofocus capabilities, the R5 is 45MP (vs 24MP) and has excellent dynamic range (vs better high ISO capabilities of the A9ii). This made the R5 unique in that a single camera catered to both a bird / wildlife photographer (who needs high MP count, great autofocus and high frame rates) and a landscape photographer (who needs high MP count, superb autofocus accuracy and wide dynamic range). Bird/wildlife photographers are often birdscape and animalscape photographers and which landscape photographer wouldn't photograph birds/animals given the chance ;-). Priced at $4000 it was (and is) cheaper than the A9ii at $4500. Short supplies and lack of native super-telephoto f/4s and f/5.6s were the only factors holding the R5 back.

This brings us to today - the Sony A1, which itself leapfrogs the EOS R5 ^[3].

Competition matters - and is good, regardless of which company you are invested in and rooting for.

I'm a Nikon guy and fear they are left too far behind both Sony and Canon for now. The fact that Nikon doesn't manufacture their own sensors and is instead dependent on someone else for supply doesn't inspire confidence in me. Hopefully they have something impressive up their sleeves, and we will see a three way fight for the top spot.