Sony Alpha 1 Body

If you want the best, and have the money, then, without a doubt, the Sony Alpha 1 is the best all-round digital camera currently available.

The Sony a1 is the most refined Alpha-series interchangeable lens camera yet. Its combination of speed and resolution for both stills and video set it apart in a crowded field of excellent options, though that combination is also responsible for the price it commands. But the fact remains, most any professional photographer will be able to use the a1 for most anything they'd think to shoot.

The Alpha 1 becomes the most powerful all-round mirrorless camera to date, combining the best of the A7 and A9 series. The 61 Megapixel A7r IV may slightly out-resolve it, but the Alpha 1’s photo quality comes close while outpacing the A9 on speed and delivering 8k video that’s absent on the A7s. It also delivers the most practical electronic shutter with minimal skewing, anti-flicker adjustments and even support for flash. To achieve the full 30fps with continuous AF you will need a Sony lens and may need to adjust some settings, but nothing to date will match its potential for cropping at this speed. Strangely Sony continues to neglect focus bracketing and any kind of pre-capture mode, and for all its processing muscle, the Alpha 1 still requires a computer to composite pixel-shift images. And while I appreciate Sony’s commitment to mobility, I wonder how many sport and wildlife pros would prefer a chunkier body with a built-in portrait grip. Most obviously the Alpha 1 is an expensive camera. For the same money you could get the Fujifilm GFX 100S, with its 100 Megapixel medium format sensor, while for several thousand less you could get Sony’s own higher resolution A7r IV or Canon’s EOS R5 which roughly matches the photo and video quality, albeit not the speed nor the unrestricted video. The real rivals will be Canon and Nikon’s upcoming pro mirrorless bodies, but until we know what they are, Sony wears the crown for the most powerful mirrorless camera to date. Ultimately the Alpha 1 is a jack of all trades and impressively a master of many of them all too, but you have to ask yourself if you really need a camera that does so much at such a high level.