Camera
Behind the Scenes: the story behind new features in Adobe Photoshop & Lightroom
| Logos: Adobe |
This year, at Adobe’s Max conference, the company announced several new AI features coming to Photoshop, Lightroom, and Adobe Camera Raw. We talked to some of the managers and engineers behind these products to get an idea of how those features came about and to try to get a sense of what the future holds for Adobe’s photo editing suite.
Lightroom
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| The Quick Actions UI gives you easy access to a variety of subject-specific edits. |
One of the major new features for Lightroom Web and Mobile is called Quick Actions. It’s a panel that lets you easily adjust various parts of your image, giving you different sliders and suggestions based on what type of subject it detects.
“It really started with a multi-year investment into masking,” said Rob Christensen, director of product management for Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw. “We had to make sure that masking was amazing. And so for multiple years, our R&D teams and our design teams came up with an experience that was outstanding. So once we had masking in place, and you could identify a subject, hair, lips, teeth, all of that, we realized, well, let’s pair that up now with edits, and we’ll call them Adaptive Presets.”
Quick Actions essentially serve to make that work more visible and accessible. “With Quick Actions, what you’re selecting in many cases are just Adaptive Presets that are relevant to that specific photo,” Christensen said. “We’re building from masking, Adaptive Presets, now Quick Actions. And it’s all coming together now into a unified experience – that was our vision years ago, and now it’s coming to life.”
Christensen said that Adobe actually quietly launched the feature on the web a few months ago. “We didn’t make a lot of noise around it, but customers have been using it on the web. Part of the reason why we brought it to Web first is it’s just easier. We could get some additional feedback, we could do more experimentation; the web is very easy to iterate on.”
“Part of the reason we also brought it to mobile is it’s really designed for the mobile user, where they want to get to a quick result,” Christensen said. “They don’t necessarily want to go through all the different panels. In a mobile UI, a lot of things are hidden – but what if we could surface all of these advanced capabilities for mobile users to get to an edit? A bit of a goal over the last six months that’s connected with Quick Actions is how do we help users capture, import, and share an amazing photo in under 60 seconds?”
At the moment, it’s unclear if the feature will be coming to the dedicated desktop apps. “We’re definitely looking at and listening to customer feedback. And so far, I think there’s a lot of excitement, especially from desktop users. But we’re not making any official announcements at this time.”
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The selection tool for Generative Remove has also been improved.
Image: Adobe |
Generative Remove, which lets you use AI to erase objects from a scene using AI, is also now generally available across all versions of Lightroom. It’s the type of thing you could easily do if you opened an image in Photoshop, but now you don’t have to leave Lightroom.
“The way we think about what we’re building with Lightroom is it’s purpose-built for photographers,” said Christensen. “So if they have a specific use case that is important for photography, we will look at bringing that into Lightroom. Distraction removal is a great example of an area that makes sense for photography. That’s how a lot of customers are using generative remove today.”
Finally, for Lightroom Classic devotees worried about any plans to completely replace the older-school version of the app with the new cloud-based Lightroom, Christensen seemed to offer some reassurance. “As it stands right now, we’re continuing to innovate on both surfaces. We have a lot of customers on both that love the unique benefits.”
Adobe Camera Raw
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Left: Adobe Color. Right: Adobe Adaptive
Image: Adobe |
One of the most compelling photography-related features announced at Max is the new Adobe Adaptive profile for ACR. It’s meant to give you a better starting point for your own edits than older profiles like Adobe Color.
“One of the things that makes Adobe Adaptive unique is the fact that it’s a lot more image content aware,” said Eric Chan, a Senior Principal Scientist on the Adobe Camera Raw team. “In the past we would look at basic properties in the histogram and other attributes of the image. But with AI models now, we have a lot more semantic information about whether there’s a person in it, whether there’s a sky in it, etc.”
That awareness helps it make base-level adjustments, giving you a better starting point to put your own edits on top. “It can do things like fix skies, fix backlit portraits, it can do things nicely with faces, and it can control a lot more attributes of the image than our previous profiles,” Chan said.
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| You can control how intense the Adobe Adaptive look using the ‘Amount’ slider. |
Unlike pressing the ‘Auto’ button on other profiles, Adobe Adaptive doesn’t change the sliders for parameters like exposure, contrast, highlights, etc.; those are still set to 0, allowing you room to do your own edits. ” I think the other unique aspect that there’s an amount slider that’s underneath the profile itself,” said Chan. “You can do a quick edit. Like, I like what it’s doing, but maybe it’s too much, let’s go to 80%, or maybe you want to go beyond, like 150%. But then there’s the finer-granularity control, things like color panels that you can combine with that.”
The company’s also bringing its Generative AI features to ACR, including Generative Remove and Generative Expand, which lets you “go beyond the boundaries of your photo using the power of AI.” In other words, you ask it to make your picture wider or taller, and it will try to fill in the space in a reasonable way. Any changes you make in ACR will also apply to the AI-generated portion of your picture, and the program will add a Content Credentials tag to the image, marking it as containing AI-generated content.
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| Generative Expand essentially lets you ‘crop out’ with AI imagery. |
Those are interesting features to see in Adobe Camera Raw since, as the name implies, the program has previously been dedicated to adjusting the data your camera captured. Editing content using AI or other tools has been the domain of Photoshop and, to a lesser extent, Lightroom, which has had the Generative Remove feature for a while.
We asked what the thinking was behind adding Generative AI to ACR and Christensen said: “With Lightroom and ACR we’re trying to ensure that photographers can observe that moment as best they can. When we talk to customers, they feel it’s unfortunate if they have 90% of an amazing photo, but it’s just that 10% that is not how they remember the scene. Maybe because they couldn’t get the camera at the right spot at the right time.” He also reiterated that using the generative AI features was completely optional.
The line about making images according to people’s memories isn’t new; in fact, it’s very similar to how phone manufacturers like Samsung and Google are talking about their generative AI features – it’s just a bit odd to hear it in reference to an app dedicated to Raw photography. However, Christensen says there’s a line between what you can do in ACR, and what you can do in Photoshop. “We are not introducing capabilities like Generative Fill, where you can say ‘add an elephant flying from the sky with an umbrella.’ That doesn’t capture the moment; that’s creativity.”
Photoshop
This year, Adobe made several of its generative AI tools in Photoshop generally available and added a new “Distraction Removal” tool that can automatically remove wires, cables, and people from images. Removing wires can be done with a single click, while the people mode gives you the chance to refine the selection in case it selected people you still want in the picture, or didn’t select people you want to get rid of.
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| The ‘People’ mode of the Find Distractions feature lets you decide which subjects you want to keep or to add more subjects to remove. |
According to Stephen Nielson, Senior Product Manager for Photoshop, Adobe plans to add an additional mode for the Distraction Removal tool to handle non-human or cable distractions. “The way we’ve approached this is, first, the most popular thing that people want to remove from a photo is people. So tourists or people in the background or whatever,” he said. “And so the categories that we’re working on are first: people. Second: cables and wires because they’re a pretty specific thing. And then there’s a category of basically everything else.”
Nielson says the everything else category will be like the people one, where Photoshop will select what it thinks are distractions but let you add to or remove from the selection before hitting the remove button.
It’s quite challenging to come up with a single model that can detect all sorts of distractons
Adobe’s not currently announcing when that feature will roll out, as it’s still in the process of building the model. “It’s quite challenging to come up with a single model that can detect all sorts of distractions, whether it’s somebody’s shoulder that’s in the image, or a garbage can, or a pile of leaves, or a random bicycle. It could be anything, right?”
According to Nielson, the training process involved a lot of human work. “We actually give pictures to people and say which objects are distracting?’ You do that enough times, and you can train a model to say, ‘Hey, this is what people usually say is distracting,'” he said. “That’s not the only kind of data that’s included in our training data set, but a lot of it is, like, hey, somebody’s gone through and annotated data to suggest which objects are distracting.”
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| If you want to use the Remove tool without generative AI, you can. |
Like many features in Photoshop, Distraction Removal can take advantage of Adobe’s generative AI, though it’s not 100% reliant on it. “It actually can either use Content-Aware fill or generative fill technology,” said Nielson. “We’ve built an automatic selector that will, based on what you’ve selected and you’re trying to remove, automatically choose either Content-Aware fill or generative fill, depending on which one’s best.”
Adobe has also added a drop-down menu that lets you manually select whether you want any part of the Remove tool, including the Distraction Removal feature, to use Generative AI or Content-Aware Fill. Nielson, however, recommended leaving it on auto. “Content-Aware Fill is better for areas with similar textures, areas where there’s lots of noise, or higher resolution images. Whereas Generative Fill is really good at details, which Content-Aware Fill just isn’t good at. So there’s a good use case for both, and the auto selector we have allows the algorithm to choose which one’s going to be best.”
We think generative technology is huge, but it’s not the answer for everything
Nielson thinks Generative AI will play a big part in future Photoshop features, but it won’t be the only way the company improves the program. “There’s still a lot of areas where we think generative technology is going to dramatically simplify things that were previously tedious and time-consuming inside Photoshop and give you more time to be creative.”
The company showed off one such example at its Sneaks presentation, which showcases tech demos that may or may not actually make it into Adobe products in the future. The demo, nicknamed ‘Perfect Blend,’ automatically matches lighting and color between objects you’re photoshopping in to a background.
“But there’s also going to be a lot of other non-gen AI improvements that we want to put into Photoshop,” Nielson said. “Just making the application run smoother, faster, be more efficient, speed up workflows with non-genitive technology. We think generative technology is huge, but it’s not the answer for everything. So, there’s a lot of other things that we are planning just to make the app better.”
Wildlife Photographer of the Year winners
The 11th annual International Landscape Photographer of the Year competition has announced the winners of its 2024 awards, showcasing stunning imagery from around the world. Photographers competed in various categories, including the coveted Landscape Photographer of the Year, requiring a portfolio of at least four images, and Landscape Photograph of the Year, recognizing the power of a single captivating shot.
This year’s competition saw Canadian photographer Andrew Mielzynski, an amateur with a deep connection to the natural environment, claim the top prize for his portfolio of stark images with simple color palettes. Ryohei Irie from Japan captured the Landscape Photograph of the Year award with a mesmerizing image of fireflies illuminating a forest.
Beyond the overall winners, the competition presented awards in specific categories, including Black and White, Aerial, Snow and Ice, and Forest, along with at-large winners. In addition to the overall and category winners, we’ve included several of our favorite photos from the 202 photographs recognized this year. You can visit the competition’s website to see all the winning images or to download its 2024 eBook.
Landscape Photographer of the Year: 1st place
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Photographer: Andrew Mielzynski, Canada
Subject and location: Cono de Arita in the Salar de Arizaro, Atacama Desert in Argentina
Description: The Cono is a perfectly cone-shaped volcano at 3,690 meters above sea level. It’s very graphic due to the contrast between the dark, perfectly formed cone and the bed of white salt that is found at its base.
Copyright Andrew Mielzynski / The International Landscape Photographer of the Year
Landscape Photographer of the Year: 1st place
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Photographer: Andrew Mielzynski, Canada
Subject and location: Winter Cottonwoods, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Description: During the pandemic, I went out for a walk at a local park during a fierce winter storm. I ran across this scene. It seemed very chaotic, with many layers of trees. I loved how the snow, driven by high winds, was embedded into the bark of the trunks. The snow on the bark created a textural contrast that adds detail and interest to the trees. I took a few frames, trying to simplify the scene in front of me and settled on this one, loving the tones, the depth, the order and the minimalism. Even in a chaotic scene, there seems to be a sense of balance that feels orderly and pleasing.
Copyright Andrew Mielzynski / The International Landscape Photographer of the Year
Landscape Photographer of the Year: 1st place
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Photographer: Andrew Mielzynski, Canada
Subject and location: Found in a roadside ditch near Heathcote, Ontario, Canada
Description: After a melt, we had a flash freeze with extremely cold temperatures and a clear blue sky. I was driving by a ditch on the side of a road that had been filled with water and had to stop and look (as we photographers do, can’t pass a ditch without investigating). This is what I found. Great textures and patterns, tones and flow, with lovely graphic lines creating a dynamic, abstract designs. I love this type of work – it’s so much fun, yet challenging to find just the right composition.
Copyright Andrew Mielzynski / The International Landscape Photographer of the Year
Landscape Photographer of the Year: 2nd place
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Photographer: Ignacio Palacios, Australia
Subject and location: Pumice Field, La Puna, Argentina
Copyright Ignacio Palacios / The International Landscape Photographer of the Year
Landscape Photographer of the Year: 2nd place
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Photographer: Ignacio Palacios, Australia
Subject and location: Seven Colors Mountain, Siloli Desert, Bolivian Altiplano
Copyright Ignacio Palacios / The International Landscape Photographer of the Year
Landscape Photographer of the Year: 2nd place
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Photographer: Ignacio Palacios, Australia
Subject and location: Arita Cone, La Puna, Argentina
Copyright Ignacio Palacios / The International Landscape Photographer of the Year
Landscape Photographer of the Year: 3rd place
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Photographer: Gheorghe Popa, Romania
Subject and location: Early Autumn, Vânători Neamț Natural Park, Romania
Copyright Gheorghe Popa / The International Landscape Photographer of the Year
Landscape Photographer of the Year: 3rd place
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Photographer: Gheorghe Popa, Romania
Subject and location: Poisoned Beauty, Geamăna, Apuseni Mountains, Romania
Copyright Gheorghe Popa / The International Landscape Photographer of the Year
Landscape Photographer of the Year: 3rd place
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Photographer: Gheorghe Popa, Romania
Subject and location: Whispers of the Sunken Trees Cuejdel Lake, Romania
Copyright Gheorghe Popa / The International Landscape Photographer of the Year
Landscape Photograph of the Year: 1st place
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Photographer: Ryohei Irie, Japan
Subject and location: Traces of Light, Ichinomata, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan
Description: The Landscape Photograph of the Year Award went to Ryohei Irie of Japan. He likes the mysterious atmosphere created by the standing dead trees and firefly light. “I have been visiting this Subject and location for several years during the firefly season, and it is an interesting place because the intensity and length of the firefly light and the Subject and location where the fireflies fly vary greatly, depending on the year and time of day, resulting in completely different works, even when photographed in the same way.”
Copyright Ryohei Irie / The International Landscape Photographer of the Year
Landscape Photograph of the Year: 2nd place
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Photographer: Justinus Sukotjo, Indonesia
Subject and location: Mother Care Framing, Walakiri Beach, Sumba Island, Indonesia
Copyright Justinus Sukotjo / The International Landscape Photographer of the Year
Landscape Photograph of the Year: 3rd place
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Photographer: Himadri Bhuyan, India
Subject and location: The Flow, Sohra, Meghalaya, India
Copyright Himadri Bhuyan / The International Landscape Photographer of the Year
The Black and White Award
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Photographer: J. Fritz Rumpf, United States
Award: The Black and White Award 2024
Subject and location: White Tie Affair. Death Valley National Park, California, USA
Copyright J. Fritz Rumpf / The International Landscape Photographer of the Year
The Aerial Award
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Photographer: Benjamin Barakat, Switzerland
Award: The Aerial Award 2024
Subject and location: The Final Dune, Namibia
Copyright Benjamin Barakat / The International Landscape Photographer of the Year
The Snow and Ice Award
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Photographer: Jeroen van Nieuwenhove, Iceland
Award: The Snow and Ice Award 2024
Subject and location: Isþyrlu – Ice Swirl, Scoresbysund, Greenland
Copyright Jeroen van Nieuwenhove / The International Landscape Photographer of the Year
The Forest Award
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Photographer: Shirley Wung, Taiwan
Award: The Forest Award 2024
Subject and location: Fireflies flying in the Misty Mountains, Wufeng Township, Hsinchu, Taiwan
Copyright Shirley Wung / The International Landscape Photographer of the Year
The Exciting Sky Award
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Photographer: Federico Delucchi, Italy
Award: The Exciting Sky Award 2024
Subject and location: Aurora, meteor shower and other cool stuff, Rocca la Meja, Italy
Copyright Federico Delucchi / The International Landscape Photographer of the Year
Other top entries
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Photographer: Laura Bennet, United States
Subject and location: Sumba Island, Indonesia
Copyright Laura Bennet / The International Landscape Photographer of the Year
Other top entries
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Photographer: William Preite, Italy
Subject and location: Pale di San Martino, Falcade, Dolomites, Italy
Copyright William Preite / The International Landscape Photographer of the Year
Other top entries
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Photographer: Siegfried Makedanz, Germany
Subject and location: Sandfellsjökull Glacier Lagoon, Southern Iceland
Copyright Siegfried Makedanz / The International Landscape Photographer of the Year
Other top entries
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Photographer: Sabine Weise, Germany
Subject and location: Moonscape Overlook, Utah Badlands, USA
Copyright Sabine Weise / The International Landscape Photographer of the Year
Other top entries
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Photographer: Yuriy Vantowski, United States
Subject and location: Mount Bromo, East Java, Indonesia
Copyright Yuriy Vantowski / The International Landscape Photographer of the Year
Other top entries
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Photographer: Tanay Das, India
Subject and location: Kistwa, Himalaya, Jammu and Kashmir, India
Copyright Tanay Das / The International Landscape Photographer of the Year
Other top entries
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Photographer: Rajesh Jyothiswaran, United States
Subject and location: Texas, United States
Copyright Rajesh Jyothiswaran / The International Landscape Photographer of the Year
| Images: Canon, Nikon |
It wasn’t long ago that many of our reviews of APS-C cameras had to come with a warning: no matter how good the body was, you were almost certainly going to be limited by lens selection. This was especially true with Nikon and Canon’s mirrorless cameras. Sony has followed its longstanding tradition of letting third parties build out a healthy selection of lenses, and the selection for Fujifilm’s APS-C-only X-mount is second to none, but Nikon’s Z mount and Canon’s RF mount appeared to be almost completely locked down. As a result, you could count the number of APS-C lens options available on your fingers.
But things are changing. Over the past year, we’ve seen several APS-C lenses announced and released for Canon and Nikon cameras, filling notable gaps in the first-party lens lineups. But while the situation is improving, it’s clear that the two companies are still in control.
This week, Sigma released four APS-C primes for Canon’s RF mount, making good on its promise to release six licensed lenses for the system – earlier this year, it released the 10-18mm F2.8 and 18-50mm F2.8. Meanwhile, Nikon has allowed Sigma to release select primes for Z-mount – a trio of F1.4 primes at 16, 30, and 56mm. It’s worth noting the company’s 23mm F1.4 is the only one of its APS-C primes that it hasn’t brought to Z-mount; it likely isn’t a coincidence that Nikon’s only first-party APS-C prime lens is a 24mm F1.7.
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Sigma’s APS-C prime lens lineup is quite good, and now most of them are available for almost any mirrorless APS-C camera.
Image: Sigma |
However, Nikon hasn’t stopped companies like Viltrox and Sirui from releasing a slew of Z-mount APS-C prime lenses, complete with autofocus. If you pick up a Nikon Zfc or Z50II, you can get anywhere from a 13mm F1.4 (20mm equiv.) to a 75mm F1.2 (113mm equiv.) to go with it, as well as most of the classic focal lengths in between.
Your choices are no longer limited to a few first-party options, manual-focus only lenses, or glass meant for full-frame bodies
This is an important change for APS-C shooters. Even going back to the DSLR days, it’s felt like many manufacturers have viewed the format as a stepping stone to full-frame rather than something enthusiasts and pros might consciously choose. Neither Canon nor Nikon have been particularly prolific when releasing new APS-C glass. But with the gates being slightly opened, you’re no longer limited to a few first-party options, manual-focus-only lenses from third parties, or heavier, more expensive full-frame lenses. Now, there’s at least some selection of third-party lenses with autofocus to choose from, alongside Canon and Nikon’s offerings.
This isn’t to say that you can now buy any APS-C camera you want and be assured that all the lenses you want will be available – you are still at the mercy of what Canon and Nikon wish to allow. While plenty of primes are available for Z-mount APS-C cameras, no fast zoom lenses are available; Nikon’s all start at F3.5 and end at F5.6 or F6.3.
In fact, there are currently no third-party APS-C zooms available for Nikon Z-mount at all, despite the fact that two have made the jump from E and X-mount to RF – it also goes without saying that there are many others more available on Fujifilm and Sony’s systems. That’s a bummer for anyone looking to step up from the kit lens or wanting to shoot sports or birds in anything but ideal lighting without having to shell out for and lug around a full-frame 70-200mm.
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Tamron has promised to bring its 11-20mm F2.8 APS-C lens to Canon RF mount this year as well – no word on Z-mount, despite Tamron bringing some of its full-frame lenses to Nikon.
Image: Tamron |
RF mount at least has the two constant F2.8 zooms thanks to Sigma, with one more on the way from Tamron, though those are all at the wide end. However, there are far fewer autofocus primes available for Canon, as manufacturers like Sirui and Viltrox aren’t producing them. That’s not surprising; a representative for the latter once said that Canon had told it to stop producing products for RF mount. The 85mm F1.4 lens that Samyang announced for the system in 2020 also disappeared from the market not long after.
In a perfect world, these problems wouldn’t exist. Canon and Nikon would make the lenses that their APS-C cameras needed to stand on their own feet as a real alternative to full-frame options, and there would be robust competition from third parties, which would be allowed to make whatever lenses they want.
None of that seems particularly likely. However, at least those who choose to shoot with a smaller sensor in a Canon or Nikon body have gotten a wider choice of lenses, even if they’re still bound by the companies’ rules.
At the end of the day, that’s better for everyone interested in APS-C, because it means that cameras like the EOS R7 and Z50II are competitive with the Sony a6700 and Fujifilm X-T5 in a way that they wouldn’t have been with an extremely limited lens selection. With any luck, this trend will continue, and the APS-C landscape will become more competitive – even if Canon and Nikon aren’t giving it their full attention.
The Sony Alpha 1 II is the company’s latest flagship full-frame mirrorless camera. It’s built around the same 50.1MP stacked CMOS sensor as the original but now includes an “AI processing unit,” which allows its autofocus system to recognize seven different subject types and to automatically select one based on what’s in the scene.
Key specifications
- 50.1MP stacked CMOS sensor
- In-body stabilization rated at up to 8.5EV
- Improved autofocus subject recognition with automatic selection
- Continuous shooting at up to 30fps with full AF tracking
- Pre-release capture from 0.03 to 1 second
- Fully-articulated rear screen on tilt-out cradle
- 8K 30p video downsampled from 8.6K / 4K 120fps
- 9.44M dot 240fps viewfinder – full res up to 120fps
The a1 II will retail for $6,499.99 – the same as its predecessor – and will be available in mid-December.
Index:
- What’s new?
- How it compares
- Body and handling
- Initial impressions
- Sample Gallery
- Specifications
- Press release
What’s new
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Despite using the same sensor as its predecessor, Sony claims the a1 II will have improved image quality at mid-to-high ISOs thanks to its improved image processing engine. Presumably, these improvements will only appear in the JPEGs.
Improved Autofocus
The original a1’s autofocus system could recognize humans when shooting stills and videos, and animals and birds when shooting stills. The a1 II, however, inherits the dedicated “AI processor” seen in cameras like the a7R V and a9 III and can now recognize even more subjects: it adds insects, cars, trains and airplanes. All the recognition modes are now available in movie mode as well, and the system can specifically target key parts of recognized subjects, such as a driver’s helmet.
The a1 II brings an ‘Auto’ subject recognition mode to the Alpha line
Sony also claims that human and animal eye recognition should be around 30% better than the a1 and that bird eye recognition should be 50% better. The Animal and Bird modes have also been merged, meaning you won’t have to switch between subject recognition modes if you want to go from shooting animals to birds or vice versa.
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| The a1 II’s Auto Subject Detection mode lets you narrow-down the types of subject it’ll search for, to help optimize the performance. |
Not that you would necessarily have to switch modes manually. The a1 II is Sony’s first Alpha camera to have an Auto subject recognition mode, where it can determine what type of subject it should be tracking and lock on to it. As with the similar system on Nikon’s cameras, this comes with a small speed penalty compared to having a specific subject recognition mode selected. However, it can be useful if you need to quickly go between shooting a variety of subject types.
You can also speed up the system by limiting which types of subjects the Auto mode selects between; for example, you can make it so it only looks for humans, animals, and birds if you’re not planning to shoot any insects or vehicles.
Finally, Sony’s also adding extra small and extra large spot focus area options.
Pre-Capture
One feature that’s become commonplace since the launch of the a1 is pre-capture – a way for the camera to save the moments before you press the shutter, helping you capture key moments beyond your ability to anticipate them. The a1 II adds it, recording up to 30 frames in the moments leading up to you pressing the shutter button, though if you want to go above 20fps, you will be limited to using lossy compressed Raws instead of lossless compressed ones. When enabled, the pre-capture is activated by a half-press of the shutter, the press of the AF button, or both, depending on your settings.
You can set the pre-record window to be as short as 0.03 seconds or as long as a second, with several options in between.
Better stabilization
The a1 II’s internal image stabilization is now rated for up to 8.5 stops in the center of the frame and 7 stops on the periphery (a new CIPA metric), up from a 5.5 stop rating on the a1.
Viewfinder tweaks
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Hardware-wise, the a1 II’s EVF seems largely unchanged from the a1’s: it’s the same resolution and can run at the same 240fps. However, Sony says you can now run in 120fps mode with display quality set to ‘high,’ though you will still see a drop in resolution if you go up to 240fps.
There’s also now a ‘deep’ viewfinder eyecup included in the box, alongside the standard one
Video
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The a1 II retains most of the original’s video specs. This means 8K capture at up to 30p, full-width 4K capture at up to 60p and up to 120p with a 1.13x crop. The 4K isn’t derived from the 8K footage, though, so you don’t gain the detail benefit of 2x oversampling.
The a1 II adds a few quality-of-life updates, though. The most impactful will probably be the aforementioned support for using all the subject tracking modes while shooting video, but you can also now import up to 16 custom LUTs that you can use to preview what your Log footage will look like when graded. You can also embed the LUT alongside your files, so that someone else editing your footage can match your intended look.
Just as we’ve seen with Sony’s other recent large-sensor cameras, the a1 II only shoots the S-Log3 profile, which captures a very wide dynamic range. It no longer offers the less expansive S-Log2 option. The a1 II also gains the attractive and flexible S-Cinetone profile if you don’t want to color grade in post.
The camera also has the Auto Framing feature found on some of Sony’s vlogging cameras, where it will crop in on the subject and move the frame around to make it seem like there’s a cameraperson tracking them. There’s also a ‘Dynamic active’ image stabilization mode, which Sony says will increase the stabilization by up to 20% compared to the standard ‘Active’ mode, and a ‘Framing Stabilizer’ mode that’s meant to ensure that your frame maintains the same composition as much as possible when shooting handheld.
Noise Reduction Composite Raw
Sony has expanded on the a1’s pixel shift multi-shot mode, adding a noise reduction mode that shoots between 4 and 32 Raw images that can be composited together using a desktop computer running the company’s Imaging Edge software. Sony pitches it as a mode for low-light portraiture.
It’s most easily understood as a multi-shot mode without the pixel-shift movement. Rather than trying to boost resolution it aligns and combines multiple images to boost the signal-to-noise ratio (ie: tonal quality) at each pixel position. As with pixel shift mode, it’ll work best when there’s little to no movement within your scene.
The a1 II also gains focus bracketing, which the original a1 lacked.
How it compares
The most direct competitor to the a1 II is Nikon’s Z9, its pro-focused high speed, high resolution model. Canon’s EOS R1 lower resolution makes it more of an a9 III competitor, but it’s these models primarily and explicitly made for professional shooting in the most demanding circumstances that Sony’s trying to target.
However, given how much of the Z9 and R1 Nikon and Canon have included in the Z8 and EOS R5 II, respectively, it’s also fair to include one of those models here, too. Sony doesn’t use the two-grip and larger battery design for its pro models, which makes the comparison even more inviting, despite them being a different class of camera.
| Sony a1 II | Nikon Z9 | Canon EOS R5 II | Sony a1 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MSRP | $6,499 | $5,499 | $4,299 | $6,499 |
| Pixel count | 50MP | 45MP | 45MP | 50MP |
| Sensor type | Stacked CMOS | Stacked CMOS | Stacked CMOS | Stacked CMOS |
| Max frame rate | E: 30fps lossy compressed Raw / 20fps lossless compressed raw |
20fps 14-bit Raw
30fps JPEG |
E: 30fps
M: 12fps |
E: 30fps lossy compressed Raw / 20fps lossless compressed raw
M: 10fps |
| Flash sync speed | M: 1/400
E: 1/200 |
E: 1/200 |
M: 1/200
E: N/A |
M: 1/400
E: 1/200 |
| Stabilization | 8.5EV center, 7EV periphery | 6EV | 8.5EV | 5.5EV |
| Max video res / rate | 8K/30 | 8K/60 | 8K/60 | 8K/30 |
| Video formats |
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| AF sensitivity | -5.33EV* | -5.0EV (-7.0 in Starlight AF mode) | -7.5EV | -5.33EV* |
| Viewfinder | 9.44M dots 0.90x | 3.69M dots 0.80x | 5.76M dots 0.76x | 9.44M dots 0.90x |
| Rear LCD | 3.2″ 2.1M dot, fully articulating with tilt | 3.2″ 2.1M dot, 4-axis tilting | 3.2″ 2.1M dot, fully articulated | 3.0″ 1.44M dot, tilting |
| Connectivity |
|
|
|
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| Stills battery life EVF / LCD | 420 / 520 | 700 / 740 | 250 / 540 | 430 / 530 |
| Video battery life (LCD) Cont. / Actual | 150 min / 90 min | 170 min / – | 150 min / 95 min | |
| Dimensions | 136 x 97 x 83mm | 149 x 150 x 91mm | 138 x 98 x 88mm | 129 x 97 x 81mm |
| Weight | 743g | 1340g | 670g | 737g |
* – Sony rates its AF sensitivity using an F2 lens, while Nikon and Canon use an F1.2 lens. We’ve adjusted Sony’s rating by -1.33EV to account for the difference.
The a1 II has the joint fastest shooting rate here and its sensor readout is quicker than the roughly 1/160 that the EOS R5 II can achieve. Likewise it has a built-in Ethernet connection, which the Canon lacks and, unlike the EOS R5 II and Nikon Z8, has matched card slots so that pros can focus on a single type of media and never have to worry about an performance difference between slots.
It’s much more evenly-matched against the Z9, which has a much lower resolution viewfinder but a low-latency readout path from its sensor to make the viewfinder more responsive. The Z9 can only shoot at up to 20fps in Raw, dropping to 12-bit readout and JPEG-only mode to hit 30fps.
Body and handling
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Given that the a1’s audience is professionals who use it day in and day out, it’s no surprise that Sony has been conservative with changes to its magnesium body and controls – the a1 II’s tweaks are largely the same as the a9 III’s, with the grip getting deeper and the shutter button being angled forward towards your finger.
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The dials and buttons are largely in the same places, though the exposure compensation markings have been removed from the locking top-plate control dial. The stills / video / S&Q modes have also been moved to a sub-dial rather than being settings on the mode selector dial, and the drive select dial now has a disable setting that lets you control the camera’s drive mode purely through menus.
The a1 II also features an additional programmable button on the front next to the grip. By default, it acts as a ‘Speed Boost’ button, upping your shooting rate as you hold it down. For example, you could be shooting at 15fps and press the button to start shooting at 30fps for a few seconds when the action speeds up or when you want to be sure you’ll capture a specific moment. This option can be moved to another button and the boosted frame-rate can be tailored to suit your subject.
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The biggest physical change is the display. It’s a bit larger and higher resolution than the a1’s, and it can now tilt in addition to being fully articulated. It’s a design we saw with the a7RV, and one that should make both photographers and videographers happy. It also has the slightly updated menu system from the a7RV as well, with the interactive settings tab.
As discussed above, the viewfinder is largely still the same, with a large 0.9x magnification and 9.44M dots giving a resolution of 2048 x 1536px. Its 120fps mode is nicer to use now that it doesn’t come with a substantial drop in resolution.
Ports and slots
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The a1 II’s I/O is largely unchanged from its predecessor, though the ports have moved around a bit. It still has a headphone and microphone jack, a USB-C port that runs at 3.2 Gen 2 10Gbps speeds, a full-size HDMI port, Sony’s micro USB ‘Multi’ accessory port, and a flash sync port.
It also has dual-band 2.4 and 5GHz Wi-Fi with 2×2 MIMO and an upgraded Ethernet port that runs at 2.5Gbps instead of the 1Gbps speeds the port on the a1 was limited to. That should make transferring large videos and batches of photos over long distances faster – try finding a high-speed USB-C cable that’s more than a few meters long – and is another sign of the pro workflows this camera is designed to support. The Ethernet port also now has a Wake on LAN feture that can be used to remotely turn the a1 II on using Remote Camera Tool.
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On the other side, the a1 II features a pair of the combined CFexpress Type A / UHS-II SD card slots for storage that feature on many of Sony’s cameras.
Battery
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The a1 II uses Sony’s NP-FZ100 batteries, and includes a dual-battery charger in the box, which it claims will charge two batteries at once in around 155 minutes.
The camera is rated to give 420 shots per charge when using the rear screen. As always, CIPA figures tend to significantly underestimate the actual number of shots most people will get, and this discrepancy gets significantly larger when you’re shooting bursts. But, while we’d expect a camera rated at 420 shots per charge to actually be able to shoot multiple times this number in practice, it’s usually a good indicator of how its battery life compares with other cameras (ie: if it gets a rating 50% lower than another camera, it’s likely to capture around 50% fewer shots per charge).
Initial impressions
By Richard Butler
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The a1 II’s AF proved very effective at staying focused on the player we’d specified, in our testing so far.
Sony FE 400mm F2.8 GM OSS | F2.8 | 1/4000 sec | ISO 640 |
When the original a1 arrived, just shy of four years ago, it represented an unprecedented combination of high resolution and speed. Despite a 50MP sensor, its Stacked CMOS design with on-board RAM let it capture stills at up to 30fps with readout speeds of around 4ms (fast enough to allow flash sync at up to 1/200 sec). This was around four times faster readout than the 20fps Canon EOS R5, which had previously come closest to offering high-speed and high res.
However, in the time that’s passed, both Canon and Nikon have produced fast high-res bodies and done so at something closer to a consumer-reachable price, leaving Sony’s pro flagship looking expensive, rather than exemplary. Don’t let this or Sony’s single-grip approach fool you: the a1 II is designed to square-up against the Z9 and R1, not the Z8 and R5 II. But it goes to show how quickly things have been moving that these more affordable models can match so much of the of the original a1’s spec and offer more advanced subject recognition.
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A pro sports camera doesn’t have to be used solely for sports, and its impressive autofocus can help maintain a very high hit-rate even when scrutinizing all 60 million pixels.
Sony 28-70mm F2 GM @ 70mm | F8 | 1/200 sec | ISO 100 |
The a1 II helps redress this balance, somewhat, pairing the same processing capabilities as Sony’s other pro-focussed model, the a9 III, with the 50MP Stacked CMOS sensor. This includes the gain of subject recognition AF modes with the first ‘Auto’ option that lets you pare back the range of subjects it hunts for, to hit an optimal speed/convenience balance for your photography. We’ve been very impressed by the camera’s AF performance so far.
The a1 II also gains the pre-capture option that’s been becoming increasingly common on action-focused cameras. It still tops-out at 8K/30 on the video side though, and has no option for 4K derived from this 8K capture, leaving it behind both the R5 II and Z8 in this regard.
Interestingly, the a1 II still needs to drop to Sony’s damagingly lossy Raw format at 30 fps: it can only shoot lossless compressed Raw at 20fps. The difference only becomes apparent at high-contrast edges after significant editing pushes, so is unlikely to be a major issue for action shooting, but it’s a surprise that this couldn’t be addressed with the Mark II’s greater processing grunt.
“It’s these workflow features aimed at professionals that try to set the camera apart”
Critically, the a1 II also includes a series of features from both the a1 and the a9 III designed specifically for professionals trying to deliver images quickly that the less expensive rivals lack. This includes a variety of transfer options, including SFTP and several ways of marking files to be transferred. We’d also expect the a1 II to gain the ability to encode C2PA authentication metadata to its files.
Unsurprisingly, it’s the cumulative impact of these workflow features aimed at professionals working in high-intensity environments that try to set the camera apart. And if you’re not one of those people (and most of us aren’t), then the a1 II almost certainly isn’t worth so much more than the more consumer-priced models.
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| Details such as a high-speed Ethernet port and options like Start-on-LAN to enable a goal-line camera to be remotely activated and controlled are what help set the pro-tier products apart from the very high-end enthusiast/crossover models. |
But how can these small details, an Ethernet port, that huge, high-res viewfinder and details like matched media card slots really add up to justify a 50% premium over the enthusiast/pro crossover bodies, such as the Z8 and EOS R5 II? Ultimately, it may simply be a ‘Pro Tax’: that $6K is how much a pro-focused camera costs. It’s the amount the market has shown it will bear, and it’s likely to be how much companies (including single-photographer companies) will have budgeted.
If there’s any doubt in your mind about whether the a1 II is worth the extra $2000 over the Z8 or EOS R5 II, then you’re not its target audience, and consequently it almost certainly isn’t, But if you are a Sony-shooting pro, the a1 II adds significantly to the skill-set of the previous model. But against dramatically improved competition and with so much Z9 and R1 tech trickling down to the Z8 and R5 II, it’s not the game-changer its predecessor was. We’ll get a chance to test this assessment as we continue using the camera.
Sample gallery
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