This is the Sony Alpha 1, and on paper,
this camera is flat-out ridiculous,
but usually when a camera claims it can do everything,
there's often some noteworthy caveats.
So, today we're going to put it through some tests
to see if we can find those weaknesses. Let's get Undone!
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What's happening, everybody?! I'm Gerald Undone
and I can live the rest of my life without breathing.
Okay, as usual, some disclosure.
Sony sent me this camera to review.
I do not get to keep it, no money changed hands,
and Sony does not get any input
on this video's production or get to preview it
before it's posted. This video does have a sponsor though,
and that's Storyblocks. You should also be aware
that I've only had this camera for a couple days.
So, this video will not be as thorough or as polished
as the rest of my camera reviews
as I just don't have enough time before the embargo lifts.
You should not, however, take this to mean
Sony was trying to hide something
by sending it to me late.
I was asked about this on social a few times.
Nobody that I know of has had this camera for very long,
and I got mine a little bit later than that
because of Canadian customs. So, due to limited time,
I'm going to be focusing on the nerdy tests
that usually only I do, and I'm hoping that
other channels will cover the other aspects.
So, let's get that started with the big question,
does the 8K overheat?
Yes, eventually.
But I was impressed by two things.
One, how long it took it to overheat,
and two, the recovery times.
I ran the 8K test five times and averaged
1 hour and 19 minutes before shutting down
due to heat during 8K recording.
This was in a 23°C environment,
which is about 74°F,
and with the camera temperature shut off setting
set to High. I've already seen some tests floating around
out there with the shut off temp set to Standard,
and in my opinion those tests are irrelevant.
I tested it with both bit rate options, the 200mbps
and the 400mbps, at 30p and at 24p,
and with and without USB power delivery supplied.
And that's the only thing that seemed to shorten
the runtime significantly was the USB charging.
I only got 58 minutes when doing that,
but every other test I got about an hour and 20 minutes
of 8K recording. Which is a fantastic result.
And best of all it doesn't seem to be affected
by general camera use prior to the recording
like the Canon R5 was when it first launched.
But more importantly, the recovery times are outstanding.
For example, I was able to record
in bursts of 20 minutes on, one minute off
for roughly three hours before I killed two batteries
and it just stopped, and there wasn't a single
heat warning during that time.
And it actually cools down while being on as well,
so after the initial shut off, you can immediately turn
the camera back on and set up your next shot
and the camera will still continue to cool down.
In fact, after recording for an hour and 15 minutes,
I stopped recording, and very quickly did a card swap
and a battery swap and started recording again
in less than 90 seconds, and I was able to record
for another 24 minutes before the heat warning
started again and I found that if you turn the camera off
and remove the cards and battery,
you get your full 80-minute record time back
in just five minutes of rest.
So, it's still not going to be the solution
if you want to record a three-hour podcast,
but for anything up to an hour, hour and half,
you should be good assuming you're in
a temperature controlled environment.
Unless you use a dummy battery.
So, I did a test here with a V-Mount battery
connected to a dummy battery inside of the Sony Alpha 1.
And unlike the USB charging which made it overheat faster,
using a dummy battery significantly reduced
the heat generated. Not only was the camera much cooler
to the touch, but I recorded for over three hours
of 8K before eventually stopping due to time constraints.
I think I'm going to stop here
because I've been recording for three hours and 12 minutes
at 8K 24p and there's not even a heat warning,
and that's recording using a dummy battery.
So, I think this is sufficient to say that
with the dummy battery you can record
pretty much indefinitely with 8K.
Make sure you follow me on Twitter and Instagram,
by the way, if you want to see
little updates like that ahead of time.
I tend to post some work in progress on there.
Now obviously, environmental factors are going to be
at play here. I wouldn't expect to get 80-minutes
of 8K recording on a trampoline in the hot Florida sun
for example. But I can't really test that kinda stuff for you
at this time because it's winter here in Canada.
I also checked the 4K modes as well to see
if the pixel binning in full frame,
or the oversampled APS-C modes have any impact
on overheating and the results were pretty much identical
to the a7S III.
I was able to record 4K60 in either mode
for just over two hours before the battery died
with no overheat warning. So, no issues there.
You should also know that the 80-90 minutes
of 8K recording you can get before overheating
is actually very similar to the battery life
in that mode as well. The 8K eats up the battery
about 30% faster than the 4K,
so this made the overheating not seem like
that big of a deal, because you can just take
that cool-down time as a five-minute break
to pop in a new battery and card
and then likely be able to roll for at least
another hour after that.
And even though the USB power delivery did seem
to have a negative impact on overheating,
it is worth noting that this camera has the same charging
capability as the a7S III where you only lose
a couple of percent per hour
while providing USB power delivery,
so that's fantastic if you need to record
for very long sessions in 4K.
And it's using the same FZ-100 battery
as all the other recent Sony cameras
and I'm quite happy with the battery life.
So overall this section was impressive.
I gave the Canon R5 a really hard time
because of the absurd recovery times
and the fact that it had that bogus 30-minute time limit
even when it wasn't overheating.
And I wished they would have focused
the marketing more on the excellent photo features
of that camera. Well, here Sony's doing something
somewhat similar. They have an amazing photo camera,
but 8K shows up in all the headlines.
However, in this case the 8K actually feels
like a real, usable feature at launch.
And there's no 29-minute 59-second record limit.
So, I have no complaints other than the fact
that it costs something like $2,600 more than the R5,
but more on that later.
Alright, now let's talk about that resolution.
So, you've got the 8K, but then in 4K,
you've got two modes. You can put it in
an APS-C crop mode, which gives you
an oversampled 5.8K image, or you can record
full frame 4K, but using pixel binning.
So, the question I had was how do these modes stack up
against the a7S III.
So, obviously the 8K is a lot better.
In fact, the 8K looks a little better at 200%
than the a7S III's 4K looks at 100%, which is impressive.
And the 5.8K oversampled mode looks sharper
than the a7S III and has fewer artifacts as well,
but it does have more obvious noise
and comes at the cost of a 1.5X crop.
So, what about the pixel-binned, full-frame 4K?
Surprisingly to my eyes it looks very similar to the a7S III,
but with better noise performance.
But the binning algorithm they used managed to keep
the aliasing, moire, and colour artifacts to a level
that's not any worse than what we're seeing on the a7S III.
So, honestly, it's basically an a7S III
but now with an 8K mode. And that's amazing.
The 4K modes are identical between the a1
and the a7S III when it comes to codecs, bit depth,
bit rate, power consumption, etc.
And so, the storage and media requirements
are the same as well. The 8K is a bit different though.
It's only H.265 and only has 4:2:0 chroma subsampling,
but it does offer both 24p and 30p variants,
as well as 10-bit colour. And there's two bitrate options
of 200mbps and 400mbps. Both of which can be recorded
with just a V60 card. So you don't need CFexpress Type-A
or even V90 cards to record 8K on this camera,
which is crazy. And I also had a hard time
telling the difference between the 200mbps
and the 400mbps files. So overall I'm really impressed
with the 8K recording. And the 4K recording is the same
whether recording internally or externally.
So, it's not like you get an unbinned image
over HDMI or anything. They're identical.
But it does have the same HDMI raw output options
that we've been seeing from Sony cameras lately.
The biggest benefit I'd say it has over the a7S III,
whether recording in 8K, or the binned 4K from that 8K,
is the noise improvement at lower ISOs.
The Alpha 1 beats the a7S III in noise performance
in S-Log at every step until ISO 12,800,
which is when the a7S III takes over.
But even at 12,800, the a1 does an impressive job
and is better than almost any other camera
I've tested other than the Sony S series.
But there's a benefit here if you don't need
extreme low light but do tend to shoot
in that 5000 to 10000 ISO range.
On the a7S III the image cleans up at ISO 12,800 in S-Log3,
but on the Alpha 1, it cleans up at ISO 4000,
which might be a more useful value for some shooters.
This is similar to the way that the a7 III performs,
but just better and cleaner.
And similarly, the Alpha 1 has a base ISO of 800 in S-Log3,
where it's ISO 640 on the a7S III.
I also compared it to the a7R IV to show you
how it stacks up against another high-resolution sensor,
and it demolishes the R IV at pretty much every stage.
Especially when it comes to the colour shifts
that accompany these high ISOs.
And in the colour department the Alpha 1
is Sony's best camera to date.
If you've followed my channel for a while,
you probably remember me saying
that the a7S III is extremely accurate
but can lean a little green and you might want to shift
your skin tones a touch more magenta.
Then, the FX6 came along and did that shifting for you,
maybe a tad overcorrected though,
and didn't give you an accurate white balance.
Well, the Alpha 1 is the perfect in-between.
It has the excellent white balance tool that you get
from the a7S III, with almost exactly
the same colour science, except it has that slightly shifted
skin tone toward the red/magenta
and away from the yellow/green.
It's subtle, which means it will mix nicely with the a7S III,
but it's better. And I'd say at this point
it's damn near perfect.
And the Alpha 1 also comes with S-Cinetone,
which is the new Picture Profile 11 on this camera.
And this is a great inclusion that I'm very happy about.
And would obviously be my suggestion for people
who want a great straight-out-of-camera image
instead of fussing with different Cine4 or HLG settings
like we had to on the previous bodies.
This also suggests that there's nothing stopping
the a7S III from having S-Cinetone either.
Since now we know it can easily fit within the new framework
and the software doesn't necessarily require
a cine camera.
So, I urge Sony to add this
via firmware update to the a7S III.
As someone who raved about the a7S III
and own multiple bodies of it, I feel a bit cheated now
and would like that added please.
I think its fair game to make hardware features exclusive
to more expensive premium bodies,
but software features like S-Cinetone should not
be the type of thing that require you to spend
an additional $6,500 to get. Thanks for listening.
Because yes, other than little aspects like that,
the new Alpha 1 is essentially the same as the a7S III
when it comes to the menu and interface.
I do like some of the new inclusions though.
Like the option to have the shutter closed
when the camera is powered off. I like that it's there
and user controllable. Something I've been wanting
for a while since these sensors can be dust magnets.
There are a couple software things that weren't improved,
however, like the issue where if you enable
HDMI on-screen display on an external monitor
that the screen on the camera goes black.
That's still a thing. Or how you can't set
a custom white balance while in a memory recall mode.
Those are two features that I'd still like to see fixed.
Okay, now let's jump into rolling shutter
and dynamic range. The rolling shutter performance
on this camera is impressively good considering what it is,
and when you record in similar modes to the a7S III,
you'll find it very similar to the a7S III.
However, it is a bit worse when recording 8K.
I would say that it's still fast enough to be
in that passable zone, but the a7S III in 4K is a bit better
than the Alpha 1 in 8K. But the impressive part
is that the Alpha 1 is better in 8K than most
of Sony's previous cameras
or even many of the competing brands
in any of their modes.
And somehow the dynamic range is better too.
I went on and on about how impressed I was
with the dynamic range of the a7S III.
I was getting 13 stops in S-Log3 and that was rivalling
the cine cameras I was testing at that time.
Well, I busted out the Xyla 21 again.
Thanks again to DSC Labs for supplying this amazing tool
as well as the colour charts I use. Love these things.
Anyway, I was consistently getting 1/5 to a 1/3 of a stop
better on the Alpha 1 when compared to the a7S III,
setting a new imatest record for me of 13.2 stops
with a signal to noise ratio of 2.
I was honestly shocked at this result
and ran it two more times to be sure it wasn't a fluke.
I also did some brief autofocus testing,
just to see if there were any quirks in 8K
or any limitations to the autofocus,
but no it performs essentially the same as the a7S III.
They claim it might be a bit better,
but we're splitting hairs at this point--
it's sticky, reliable, and smooth.
And just like the a7S III, it features the new
refined controls for speed and responsiveness.
I also don't have a lot to say about the body.
It's very similar to the a7S III,
but without a flip screen, just your basic tilty one
and it has an a9 style stop dial on the left shoulder.
It's great. Good buttons, nicely sized, good grip.
No complaints. It's got all the ports you need.
Mic, headphone, USB-C, full sized HDMI.
The only consideration to make is that a cage
from the a7S III won't work from a ports perspective
because they aren't in the same location on this camera.
Lastly, I noticed the internal audio sounded a bit different
between the two cameras. Here, have a listen
to the built-in mic on the Alpha 1 vs the a7S III
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In terms of the audio functionality and features
in the menu, the Alpha 1 is identical to the a7S III.
Alright, so that's all the tests that I had time for.
I know there's still a whole photo side
to this camera to explore, and I'm hoping to get
some more time with the camera to do that in the future.
But for now, I hope this look
at the nerdy video details was helpful.
This is a very interesting camera.
It's absolutely superb.
It's one of those rare cases where the jack of all trades
is somehow also better than the specified masters.
It's a better photo camera than the a7R IV,
and it's a better video camera than the a7S III.
But where it gets complicated is that it costs nearly
as much as an a7R IV and an a7S III combined.
And I think for the money,
I'd rather have those two separate cameras
than this one camera by itself. So, as much as I love it,
I'm probably not going to rush out and buy it,
because I'm happy with my cameras currently.
But I also feel comfortable saying that if there ever was
a mirrorless camera deserving of a $6,500 price tag.
The Sony Alpha 1 is it.
It's funny, I just had a thought that's not
in the original script of the video,
but I remember not that many months ago
when I was reviewing the cine cameras
and we were looking at $6,000 cameras, $10,000 cameras,
$13,000 cameras that couldn't actually do
what this camera does. And then, you know,
when 8K with the Canon R5 came out we got all, sort of,
you know, muddied up with that whole topic of, like,
"Will it overheat," and all that.
But if you take that all away, this is actually
a usable 8K camera, in my opinion. It doesn't have
some of the advantages of a cine camera,
but if you look at the price from that perspective
maybe I'm a bit too hard on the $6,500 price tag,
because you wouldn't hesitate to buy a camera
of a similar spec in a cine camera. Like, if--
Think about it, if the FX6 could do everything
that it does but also do 8K at 30p with no issues,
and if you rig this camera out with, like,
a V-Mount battery, you know, like a whole camera rig,
then you probably will be using a dummy battery anyway,
which means that you can do pretty much
limitless 8K recording on this. That's crazy.
That's crazy good for $6,500. I dunno.
But I think for what I do I'd still rather have, you know,
the two bodies. One I can take out shooting photos
and one I can do video with, and then have a backup camera.
Because this is still only one body.
I guess that's something to consider. And two of these...
pretty expensive. But not crazy expensive compared
to cine cameras. Alright, that's enough rambling.
But that's gonna be it for me. I hope you found this video
entertaining or at least helpful. And if you did,
make sure you leave it the old thumbs up
and consider subscribing if you haven't already.
But if you did not find this video helpful or entertaining,
try setting the playback speed to 75%.
Alright...
I'm done.