Sony a9III – noise test, bit unfair – but anyways

After posting my thoughts on the Sony A9III – such as they were, one thing many wanted to know was ‘at what ISO does it start to get noisy/grainy’??

Now – getting back to the point that when I ‘test’ a camera, it is just at a training or a game that I attend anyways – and I do not think like… hmm, let me take these types of photos to see the grain/noise of the images and make comparisons on some techy-way. These are just my average every day photos, and whether there is noise difference in them… ??

This test is a little unfair, as I didn’t use the same lens with the camera bodies – and it wasn’t the ‘test’ between A9II and A9III which many wanted. That – might still to be come later.

In this ‘test’ I shot mainly with the A9III and then thought.. wait, I also have my A7IIIs with me for the video, let me snap few images with that as well. On the A9 I had the Sony 70-200mm f2.8 II and on the A7 I had Taproom 35-150mm f2-2.8 .. but, the ISO was put to 5000 on both, with 1/800 and f2.8. So that way the settings were the same on both cameras.

If I was a camera influencer, naturally I would have been sent more gear by some store/manufacturer and probably sent to Barbados for all expenses paid two week trip to test the gear – so I could produce a 120 second video about it 😉

But what I got was much better – my own gear and a visit to HonkaHalli in Tapiola for some basketball training sessions … but wearing Crocs on wet/icy parking lot.. yep, no more about that.

Below there are SIX images, three of which have been shot with the new A9III and three that have been shot with the A7IIIs – on PP haven’t done really anything, might have added +0.2 or something on exposure on some images. But other than that – they are straight out of the camera JPEG images, not cropped, resized or anything.

THREE IMAGES WITH A9III – THREE IMAGES WITH A7IIIS (click to enlarge images)

At this point I should of course tell everyone which image is shot with which camera, so that whether you are for or against the noise on the new body.. you can affirm your beliefs that there either is or isn’t more grain/noise on the A9III images.

Looking at the images through the camera viewfinder – at that moment, I personally maybe perhaps possibly did notice more grain on the A9III images… but the A7IIIs is supposed to be a low-light ‘beast’. So perhaps that comparison is not fair. Looking at them on the big screen at home .. ???? it is a tough one as the images are such different sizes..

Sorry not to give you a glowing or damning review of the noise on the new Sony A9III – but maybe I am old fashioned and like to give you the chance to make up your own mind. Also – it’ll be a nice game to see if you can see which photo has been taken with which camera/lens combo!