Sony just announced the A9 II. This camera was made specifically for sports, photojournalism and wildlife photographers in an attempt to meet the needs of the professional photographer’s workflow.
To start off, it can still take 20fps with blackout-free high-resolution EVF and LCD just like the original A9, but now the A9 II can shoot 10fps using the mechanical shutter, the same shutter you'll find on the A7RIV.
It still has the same autofocus system and 24.2MP full-frame stacked CMOS sensor that the original A9 has but now comes with a faster processor, improving the battery life by 10 percent. Even though Sony’s autofocus is already incredible, it will be even faster in the A9 II. Another feature to note is instead of having one USH-II and one USH-I SD card slot like the original A9, it has two UHS-II SD card slots.
The Sony A9 II has incorporated a lot of the same improvements that came with the Sony A7RIV. For example, it has the same weather sealing and ergonomics. In fact, the Sony A9 II has the same body as the A7RIV but with an extra dial on the left side. It even has the same updated color science and touchscreen as the Sony A7RIV. Although, even with the updated touchscreen, they still are behind the competition when compared to the Nikon Z7 and the Canon EOS R's touchscreen. The one thing that we wished it had from the A7RIV is the 5.7 million dot EVF viewfinder rather than the same 3.69 million dot EVF as the original A9, but that's just being nit-picky.
Now with the A9 II, you can move the focus box while half-pressing down on the shutter, which is something new to Sony cameras. It still has the 1080p and 4K video frame rates as the A9, which also means no SLog or HLG. We are also interested to see how the improved IBIS with 5.5 stops of image stabilization compares to 5 stops in the other Sony cameras.
For sports and other professional photographers, the A9 II now has a 5GHZ WIFI with a Gigabyte Ethernet port, providing fast file transfers even when the camera is off. Plus, you can now store voice memos with certain files, store camera settings as profiles, save FTP settings in an SD card, remotely format the SD card and change the FTP settings.
If you are interested in the new A9 II, it will be $4498 and available on November 6, 2019.