How has the Sonya9 III fared during an entire wedding season? I share my thoughts after extended use.
It’s been just over one year since the Sony a9 III debuted. Does the camera still live up to the hype, and how has it fared, in my opinion, as my primary wedding camera?
I will share my thoughts and reflections on having shot the entire 2024 wedding season with the Sony a9 III and comment on how the camera has helped me as a documentary wedding photographer.
Why Did I Buy the Sony a9 III?
I had been shooting with the Sony a9 since 2021, and while the a9 II came along during this time, besides its improvements to the body design, it offered no "must have" reasons to upgrade. All the inner workings were the same. Same LCD, same viewfinder, same sensor. So, I, like many other photographers, stayed with the original a9.
The a9 III, however, is a different beast.
How Has the Sony a9 III Helped Me as a Wedding Photographer?
Enhanced My Workflow (Culling and Editing Speed)
Thanks to its pioneering global sensor, the Sony A9III solves the one big problem that plaques mirrorless cameras; that is banding.
LEDs used to light indoor ceremonies produced across the sensor can wreck your photos. We have all seen it, those stripes more highlight exposed areas than others. This problem can be mitigated but not eliminated by careful selection of shutter speed.
The revolutionary global shutter eliminates this problem because the whole sensor is instantly read out. Therefore, the sensor does not capture instances where the intermittent artificial light source cycles on and off. You get slight exposure variances between frames but not variances in exposure within the frame.
This means that I no longer need to cull my images to exclude those that were trashed by banding (sometimes the bands fall in a bad place), and secondly, I don’t need to apply corrective measures in post-production to every image where banding is problematic but correctable.
As a wedding photographer who shoots around 200k frames a year and delivers thousands of images yearly, the time savings during culling and editing add up.
Improved Confidence in Shooting and Fewer Missed Moments
When I enter a room, I no longer need to perform test shots and troubleshoot the banding problem by trial and error; I can concentrate purely on shooting. This allows me to remain continuously observant and this is key to how I work as a documentary wedding photographer. I’m more likely not to miss the smaller moments because my attention can be fully on shooting.
One feature that I cannot now imagine being without is the 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 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 check that's over in a fraction of a second. I use it often enough to assign this function to one of my custom buttons.
Lastly, the menu system, which, compared to the A9 is much more intuitive to navigate, it’s just easier to find stuff on the go, meaning that I spend less time hunting for options to tweak and I can spend more time shooting.
Reduced Physical Fatigue Over Long Days of Shooting
With a larger body and deeper grip, I can get a much better purchase on the body, so the camera feels more secure in my hand and much more comfortable to hold. Also, it means that I no longer experience the "Pinky problem", doing away with the need for me to add a grip extender. This makes the camera feel lighter, which is important for the way that I shoot because I often shoot with the camera above head height.
Button positioning is improved, along with larger buttons that travel more to them, making the camera feel much more comfortable to operate. The best improvement is the new shutter placement; it’s angled, reducing the amount of rotation my wrist needs to hit it. (On the a9, the shutter is almost on top of the body)
Reduced Eye Fatigue Over Long Days of Shooting
Upgrading to the LCD and viewfinder has made the camera feel much less tiring for my eyes to use over a typical 10-hour wedding, compared to the Sony a9.
The screen diameter is 0.2” longer than the Sony a9 at 3.20”, which equates to a 13.8 % increase in viewing area. This seems marginal on paper. However, the screen appears noticeably larger. Coupled with the LCD’s 69% increase in resolution (from 374,000 dpi to 540,046 dpi), makes 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. Being able to see the screen more clearly when the camera is held at arm’s length helps to reduce eyestrain and improve my compositions because I can more clearly see the edges of the frame when the camera is away from my face.
Viewing clarity in the viewfinder is incredible. The 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). This makes for a more immersive experience.
The sum of the improvements to body design, EVF and viewfinder helps my eyes to feel less tired, and It helps to feel more alert to capture goings on.
Additional Aspects of the Sony a9 III's Performance
I’ve outlined the main benefits the camera has brought to me as a wedding photographer, however, it’s worth commenting on these aspects of the camera’s performance to conclude the article.
Battery Life
I’ve found that the battery life is solid. At a typical wedding, I’ll use four batteries over a 10-hour shoot and I’ll take around 5,000 frames with the camera. I would the battery performance with the Sony A9III is on par with the older camera.
ISO
There were a lot of murmurings from the photography community about the camera’s base ISO ‘only’ being 250 and concerns about the camera’s high ISO performance. In practice, as a wedding photographer, it doesn’t make too much difference. I’m often shooting ceremonies indoors so my ISO is above 250 anyway and when I’m outside with ISO 250, the image quality is great.
At the higher end of the scale, however (above ISO 4000), I do find that there’s more noise in the Sony a9 III’s files compared to the a9. But this doesn’t matter to me because the files are fine to work with in post.
If I’m shooting the dancefloor without flash, which I typically do because I want to capture the ambiance, I’ll still opt for the Sony a9 III because it eliminates banding. I might get ‘cleaner’ high ISO dancefloor photos with the a9, but banding is a deal breaker. It’s a trade-off.
I haven’t done a side-by-side comparison here; this is just my opinion after shooting 20 weddings with the camera alongside my a9, taking together around 150,000 frames and editing over 10,000 photos in a wide range of shooting conditions.
Autofocus
As you may have guessed, autofocus is very good! It’s far more capable than that which is required for a wedding (action is not usually lighting fast at weddings). Leaving autofocus speed and accuracy aside, one thing that I have noticed which is a great improvement is the ‘intelligence of the autofocus’.
I’ve had the experience before where I’ve locked onto a subject, and then another person walks past them, and the focus point will jump to follow the new person. What’s impressive about the Sony a9 III is that this no longer happens – the autofocus remains locked onto my subject and doesn’t get distracted by new arrivals close to my focal point.
Conclusion
The Sony a9 III is the best wedding camera that I have used.
It has saved me time in post-production by making banding a thing of the past. The ergonomic improvements to body design, EVF and LCD over its predecessor have made the camera much less fatiguing to work with during the long hours of a wedding day and being able to use the pre-capture has been a joy.
If you are a wedding photographer, it would be great to hear in the comments about your experience using the camera, and if you are a Sony shooter, what’s the one feature you would like Sony to introduce next?
