Sony A9 III What is the real use, specifically for printing at least at A3+

[warrior-kid]

Hi,

Just added Sony as a near field complement for the Nikon long lens bird photography. While hoarding and sharing privately, plus shipping off the photos to Flickr qualifies as valid final destination for photos--apart from them serving as personal mementos, I am confident that I can print at least the best photos on my Canon Pro-300 (A3+) or even a larger A2 printer at a studio.

I am very interested in adding an A9 III to my A1 II (plus 300GM with teleconverters), particularly for action. Can any one share their experience with printing the resulting photos? I am worried that I am going to end up with Instagram attention grabbing artifacts--the type of fame that has next to no interest to me. I have studied quite a few A9 III photos on Flickr, fredmiranda, dpreview, and here and, frankly, I can see a lot of sharpening, and no real deep detail. I'll share a few examples of detail I am after.

Thanks!

• NIKON Z 8
• NIKKOR Z 600mm f/4 TC VR S
• 840.0 mm
• ƒ/5.6
• 1/400 sec
• ISO 10000

• NIKON Z 8
• NIKKOR Z 600mm f/4 TC VR S Z TC-1.4x
• 840.0 mm
• ƒ/8
• 1/800 sec
• ISO 1800

 

[iamdlewis]

I have two images that were taken with a phone at about 11mp with 300dpi that are printed to 72x41cm and nobody questions if they were shot with a phone. The photo lab Whitewall.com has a tool that can give you a sense of how an image will look when printed at various sizes which might be helpful to you.

 

[Richard A]

Have you cropped these photos? I don't know the native resolution of the Z8 but it should easily be high enough to print 12" x 18" on A3+ paper. You'd want to remove the distracting branches in the 2nd image though. I don't tend to print photos of small birds too large - it looks weird to me. And I tend not to crop too tight to show more of the environment.

 

[warrior-kid]

Have you cropped these photos? I don't know the native resolution of the Z8 but it should easily be high enough to print 12" x 18" on A3+ paper. You'd want to remove the distracting branches in the 2nd image though. I don't tend to print photos of small birds too large - it looks weird to me. And I tend not to crop too tight to show more of the environment.

Hi,

I was trying to ask someone here to post some examples from A9 III with comparable level of detail. The second one that I had posted above was probably not what I considered a good print candidate so I removed it. The first and third were (and are now first and second, respectively), plus they are not easy to obtain given special location and approach. I'm tempted to just go ahead, purchase this camera and see for myself, the YT reviewers do not offer enough information: what distance, what resolution, where was the sun, etc. If anyone has good examples of A9 III photos suitable for printing, please share. Full disclosure, I'll print them on my Canon Pro-300 to see how they look (obviously, won't redistribute) and that is my decision sorted.

As for cropping, of course, they are cropped. You cannot expect wildlife to be sitting there like a duck. Here are a couple of examples at just over 3Kx2K that will totally print very well on A3+ and A2, which are my target.

• NIKON Z 8
• NIKKOR Z 600mm f/4 TC VR S
• 840.0 mm
• ƒ/5.6
• 1/640 sec
• ISO 800

• NIKON Z 8
• NIKKOR Z 600mm f/4 TC VR S
• 840.0 mm
• ƒ/5.6
• 1/1600 sec
• ISO 1600

By the way, the browser viewer here destroys the image quality quite a bit.

Cheers

 

[iamdlewis]

When printing it doesn't matter what the camera is, the only things that do matter are the image size and dpi.

This image is from an a6000 a 24mp camera like the A9 series. My father liked this one a lot and has an 8"x12" print of it and it looks just like it does on the monitor. This image is cropped to 2482x1654 at 300dpi.

• ILCE-6000
• Sony FE 70-300mm F4.5-5.6 G OSS
• 300.0 mm
• ƒ/5.6
• 1/3200 sec
• ISO 1600

This image was taken with an A1, a 50mp camera and cropped to 613x858 at 300dpi. This looks fine on a phone but I wouldn't print it.

• ILCE-1
• Sony FE 200–600mm F5.6–6.3 G OSS (SEL200600G)
• 600.0 mm
• ƒ/6.3
• 1/800 sec
• ISO 640

This was taken with an A9 a 24mp camera cropped to 2844x5056 at 600dpi. This you could print to be life size without issue.

• ILCE-9
• Sony FE 100-400mm F4.5-5.6 GM OSS (SEL100400GM)
• 303.0 mm
• ƒ/8
• 1/500 sec
• ISO 3200

As for cropping, of course, they are cropped. You cannot expect wildlife to be sitting there like a duck.

This image was taken with an A7R4 and is not cropped so it is 9317x6211 at 1000dpi so you could print it to wall sized.

• ILCE-7RM4
• Sony FE 100-400mm F4.5-5.6 GM OSS (SEL100400GM)
• 400.0 mm
• ƒ/5.6
• 1/2500 sec
• ISO 400

 

[warrior-kid]

Many thanks for these options, will try to print a couple and see what happens. Still, if anyone has A9 III exactly, it would be excellent.

You yanks are very lucky in that your wildlife is pretty tame compared to the UK where everything scampers away at first sight. But more to the point, small birds are impossible to get too close to generally, which is where my interests lie. As for the Slavonian grebe above, it was about 40 meters from a hidden position, and one needs to say it is a doubly protected species in a breeding season. You do not get full frames of that here.