In the field: Three weeks with Sony's A1 II

In the first three weeks of owing the Sony A1 II I photographed an event for Diving Victoria, the Victorian Long Course Swimming Championships and the 2025 Australian Open.

At each of these assignments I was presented with some unique photographic challenges, so did Sony’s new flagship camera live up to my expectations?

My name is Paula Mastrippolito and I am a freelance sports and event photographer based in Mildura Victoria. I have been a Sony shooter since 2019 and currently own the A7R V and the Sony A6700 cameras.

As a sports photographer I considered purchasing the Sony A9 III but ultimately waited for the release of the updated Sony A1. 

As this is my first experience with a flagship camera of any brand, my aim with this article is not to provide a technical review of the Sony A1 II, but rather, to discuss my own real-world experience using a top of the range flagship camera for the first time.

So let’s get into it. 

Straight out of the box the Sony A1 II felt very familiar and comfortable in the hand. There are some visible differences when compared to the A7R V, most notably the additional dial on the top left of the body for the drive mode and focus area settings, and a new C5 button on the front right of the body which is pre-set to continuous shooting speed burst.

The on/off switch is angled differently to the A7R V, and this has taken me a little while to get used to.  

When I brought my first Sony Alpha camera in 2019 (the A7RIV) I spent hours and hours watching YouTube videos trying to wrap my head around all the different settings, and days trying to program in those settings. But now, with the use of CAMSET files setting up a new camera is a breeze.

For those who are not familiar with CAMSET files they are a way of quickly setting up the camera for optimum performance by programming different combinations of settings into the memory settings on the camera.  You can see Mark Galer’s Patreon site for more information.

The day after receiving the camera my first assignment was the RipNTear event for Diving Victoria. Now I only get to shoot diving once a year and personally I find it to be quite a challenging sport to shoot.

This is an outdoor event where I am trying to photograph a small dot of a person, twisting and turning in mid-air whilst plummeting towards the pool of water. 

My vantage point is constrained by a fenced pool deck, I am shooting in full sun with challenging backgrounds to contend with.

I paired the Sony A1 II with my 70-200 GM F2.8 lens, turned the camera on, set my memory dial to number 2 (the Action setting) and squeezed the trigger as I normally would.

And WOW the camera just flies through the frames at 30fps! 

I only need the lightest of touches on the trigger, and with all the noise in the background half the time I don’t even realise that the camera has taken the shots, it is that quiet. 

When I review the images on the back of the camera it is like watching a video where you follow the diver from the moment they start their dive till when they hit the water.

But then reality set in. Before I knew it the first of my trusty 80GB CF Express Type A cards was full, and while I have more cards in my bag, I was only one hour into a five hour event.   

This is where that new mode dial on the top of the camera came into play. Straight away, on the fly and without having to delve into the menus on the camera, I was able to quickly adjust the drive mode to shoot at a lower frame rate. I also tried to reduce the amount of time I would photograph each diver in order to conserve card space.

The other thing about shooting at 30fps is that you have a heck of a lot more photos to view, upload, cull, caption and store, and there were thousands of photos from that first shoot. 

One of the features that was of particular interest to me on the Sony A1 II was the voice-tagging feature. When I ingested the first batch of images from the diving event the voice tags were so hard to spot that I thought I must have used the function incorrectly.

The reality is that when shooting at 30fps there are just so many images that finding the tagged images is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

However, by the end of the third day of the diving event I had developed a system of taking a single shot while the diver was being introduced and both star rating and voice tagging that shot, making it much easier to spot the tags in Photo Mechanic during processing. 

Having owned the camera for a full week the second event I shot was the Victorian Long Course Swimming Championships. Like the diving, competition swimming is an event that I might only shoot a couple of times a year. 

This time I used continuous shooting MID (set to 15fps) and experimented using the burst mode (that new C5 key) at times of peak action to take the frame rate up to 30fps.  While I had some success with this, I think it is going to take some practice to fluently incorporate the burst function into my shooting technique. 

Like the Sony A7R V, the A1 II has advanced subject recognition which can be set to a particular subject, or to auto.  Additionally there are multiple focus areas, and several auto-focus (AF) settings, so getting the combination of settings exactly right can be quite confusing.

Having programmed in the PAL settings (Portrait, Action, Landscape) via the CAMSET file, I was very pleased with my results from these first two shoots, even in very challenging situations.

The Australian Open

Immediately after the swimming event I was advised that I was being granting media accreditation for two days at the Australian Open on assignment for the Sunraysia Daily.

Tennis is certainly a sport that I am more comfortable photographing so this would be another ideal opportunity to put the Sony A1 II through its paces.

I have to admit it was a pretty special moment walking into the media centre of the Australian Open for the first time. And while I had taken a full kit of gear with me, I did try out a 300mm f2.8GM lens for this opportunity.  

After settling into the media workroom I was pretty keen to get out on court and try out the Sony A1 II with the 300mm GM lens. It was the start of the second week so the Junior Open was being played on the outside courts, and this was where I headed. 

Sitting on court with an unobstructed view of the players,  I was extremely impressed with how well the Sony A1 II grabbed hold of the eye and maintained focus right the way through the shot. 

Using the 300mm GM lens for the first time took some getting used to, particularly given that I would normally use a 70-200mm zoom lens when shooting court sports.   

I now realise what people mean by the term “fast glass”.   With the fixed focal length and constant f2.8 aperture the Sony A1 II and the Sony 300mm GM lens combination is a match made in heaven. When I headed back to the media centre to re-group (and to escape the heat) I looked at my first batch of images and I was astounded by the quality of the shots.

For the rest of the first day I happily continued shooting with the Sony A1 II and the 300mm G Master lens, experimenting with different vantage points both on court and up in the stands.   

I found that when paired with the fast-focussing 300mm lens the ability of the Sony A1 II to pick up the eye of the very distant subject is incredible. The detail in the images and the ability to capture the ball right on to the strings of the racket is just amazing.

I learnt a lot from just being in the Australian Open media centre and being around the other photographers  and with the second day mostly spent capturing specific images for the Sunraysia Daily my two days at the Australian Open went very quickly. 

Using the new Sony A1 II  camera during three different shoots, each of which took me out of my comfort zone in some way, was a pretty steep learning curve.  If it wasn’t for the ability to load familiar settings into the camera prior to the first use I don’t think I would have achieved the results that I did in those initial few weeks. 

Aside from the increased frame rate perhaps the biggest step up from the A7RV is the pre-capture and burst mode features, which I am still experimenting with. 

Having now owned the Sony A1 II for just over a month and shooting my normal rounds of sports and events,  I have found the need to make some adjustments to the way that I shoot.  

Rather than being a monumental change from the A7RV I feel that there are subtle changes in the Sony A1 II that all combine to improve my overall output. The response time to acquire the eye, the ability to capture a golf swing with little to no distortion in the club, the ability to watch the ball right onto the racquet or the bat, or to capture the moment the cricket player takes a catch. 

These are my real-world examples of the improvements that I can already see in my own work since owning the Sony A1 II.

The Sony A1 II is a truly remarkable camera and I am glad that chose it over the A9III which boasts the new global shutter and an insane 120fps.

The 50 megapixel stacked sensor on the Sony A1 II gives me the ability to crop my images, and the 30fps is ample for the work that I am currently doing. The Sony A1 II is light-weight and feels comfortable in the hand and the image quality is superb.

As a professional photographer I have no regrets in stepping up to this new flagship model, in fact I love it so much that I am already looking at trading in my A7RV for a second A1 II!