Sony A9 + Real Time Tracking AF + Street Photography
I previously did a post about street photography and Sony, concluding that Sony cameras were ideal for street photography. For the prior post, I used the Sony A7riii. The best things about it for street photography are the fact that you can use a discreet silent shutter, that you had AF coverage over most of the frame, and it was easy to shoot at hip level.
I don’t live or work in Manhattan but sometimes find myself there with a bit of extra time on my hands. When I do, I enjoy dabbling in street photography. Knowing I would have an hour to kill and having recently upgraded the Sony A9 firmware to 5.0, I decided it would be a good opportunity to see how well the A9 handled street photography with the newest firmware. Put simply, it’s impressive. I can’t imagine a better street photography camera.
The Gear and Challenge
While most street photographers will often use a fairly wide angle lens, I chose the Sony 55mm F/1.8 (Review here / see on Amazon / Adorama) for this adventure. The Sony 55mm F/1.8 would allow me to focus more on candid street portraits with narrow depth of field. In theory, this would also challenge the auto focus system more, as I couldn’t count on a large depth of field to cover up for autofocus errors.
Sony touts real time tracking AF with the Sony A9 firmware 5.0 upgrade. In theory, this is a major advancement of the autofocus system, not a mere firmware tweak. While you could previously track a person’s face/eye with an eye-AF button press, it required you to hold down the button while also pressing the shutter button. In a frame with multiple faces, it was not always easy to designate which person should be the focus. Real time tracking allows for very solid tracking of any subject, and if you initiate focus on a person (whether on their face or anyplace on their body), the camera will intelligently recognize that your subject is a person and will attempt to track their face and eye.
I thought NYC street photography would be the most extreme challenge for the Sony A9 autofocus system, even more so than shooting most sports. While sports entails autofocus of action, the relative focus distance does not change very rapidly. From the side line, the distance of the play may go from 50 feet to 40 feet. But when shooting street photography, the subject may start out 20 feet away and be walking directly towards me, the focus going from 20 feet to 0 feet in a a matter of seconds.
Many of my images were taken inside Grand Central Station, commuters walking by me quickly. Additionally, in order to be discreet, I’m shooting at waist level. Sometimes I’m walking while I shoot and barely looking at the LCD. If I’m shooting sports where discretion isn’t an issue, I can keep my face glued to the EVF and concentrate far more on optimal focus. Taken together, this makes me rely more on the “auto” of autofocus with street photography.
While I might use a silent shutter for some street photography with the Sony A7riii, the electronic shutter on the Sony A9 allows me to capture 10 to 20 fps silently, without any real concern for rolling shutter artifacts.
Using Real Time Tracking on the Sony A9
Before real time tracking, the Sony A9 (and most other current Sony cameras) had “lock on AF” as an option. It allowed you to put a focus box around your subject and push a button to initiate tracking. It worked poorly and it did not really distinguish between faces and other subjects. One advancement with Real Time Tracking is the ability to choose how you initiate tracking.
Use of an autofocus system is always a balance between giving control to the photographer and allowing the camera control. A good photographer always wants to be in control of choosing where focus should be placed.
As shown above, in the focus area settings on the Sony A9, “Tracking” is the last selection. You can toggle right and left for different types of tracking. You can choose “wide” where the camera will attempt to identify the subject in the frame. I used this occasionally when I was walking down the street and not even looking at the LCD. But when shooting at Grand Central and other locations, where I could discreetly look at the screen, I chose small flexible spot. I simply placed the small spot on the person who was the subject of my photograph. I then had the freedom to recompose my shot or allow the subject to zigzag around the frame, and the camera focus system should keep them in focus.
How Well the Sony A9 Tracking Worked
I set my shutter speed for a minimum of 1/500th of a second, since most of my subjects were moving and I was sometimes moving as well. Aperture was set between 1.8 and 2.2. There was enough light outdoors for low ISO but inside Grand Central, my ISO often crept up over 6400. I shot at 10 fps (medium drive), giving me a choice of frames for my final images.
If you pixel peep the images above which are two images from a burst, you will see that the Sony A9 nailed focus on the eyes. Over the course of the burst, she walked towards me and shifted in the frame.
I initiated focus quickly by placing the small focus spot anyplace on the body and then letting the tracking take over. After initiating focus, it would take about a half-second for the focus to shift to the face and eye, if the focus shifted. The camera did not always recognize that the subject was a person and sometimes just tracked the clothes of the person, just like any ordinary subject. If focusing was initiated on the person’s chest area, then it switched to focus on the face most of the time. Shooting bursts of 5-10 frames at a time, the rate of “acceptable” focus was close to 100%, with the majority achieving nearly perfect critical focus.
The tracking was essentially rock solid once it was locked with one caveat. Keeping the default sensitivity settings, if someone else crossed in front of my subject, the focus system lost the original subject more often than it re-acquired the subject. Of course, this is a challenge for any camera.
My Favorite Images
While landscapes and posed portraits are extremely planned out shots, for me at least, street photography is like going fishing or hunting. I only have a very generalized plan and I don’t know if I’m going to “catch” anything or not. When you identify an interesting subject, especially someone walking through Grand Central, you only have an instant to react. Typically, if I spend an hour or two walking around doing street photography, I might capture 3-4 images that I really like. Sometimes I just couldn’t react fast enough to capture an interesting moment. At other times, my focus system simply missed. Finally, sometimes the camera just didn’t capture the right expression on someone’s face.
In a bit over an hour shooting with the A9, I got more “keepers” than I ever did with any other camera or street shooting scenario. At 10 frames per second, I rarely missed a great expression. The focus system rarely missed when I used “small spot” to initiate tracking. When I used “wide” area tracking, there were a fair number of misses. The camera just didn’t always pick the right subject and sometimes picked the background instead of any people.
As discussed in my prior post about street photography, I often like processing street candids in black and white.I find helps to focus on the subject, especially where you had limited control over the light and background. I’ll keep the original color where the color really stands out.
Though mostly focusing on “portraits,” the focus system and speed of the A9 certainly allows for the capture of dynamic moments.
While the nature of the shooting environment led to mostly “solo” candid portraits, street photography shines when you can capture natural interactions between people. In candid moments, you can get genuine emotion which is difficult in posed portrait sessions.
The above image on the left is a rare example where focus appears to have missed slightly despite properly identifying the subject.(though I still really like the image).
I’ll end with a gallery of a few more images…
Conclusion
The 5.0 firmware update is a leap forward for the Sony A9, and this post has only addressed the changes to the focus system. This is not the first camera with subject tracking, just like Apple wasn’t the first company to use a mouse with the Mac and they weren’t the first to use a touch screen with the iPhone. But Sony’s implementation of eye-AF and subject tracking on the Sony A9 is a major refinement and advancement of the technology. The combination makes the Sony A9 the perfect camera for street portraits and street photography.
The advantages of the Sony A9 for street photography:
- Relatively small discreet body but with full frame performance
- Up to 20 frames per second
- Silent shooting without significant fear or banding or rolling shutter
- Tilting touch screen
- AF coverage over nearly the entire frame
- Automated reliable tracking of the face/eye over the entire frame
I don’t know of any other camera that can combine all of those advantages. Other Sony cameras can handle street photography quite well (Street Photography and Sony), but the fast electronic shutter and real time tracking AF takes it to a different level on the Sony A9.
In general, I’m extremely impressed with the real time tracking AF system on the Sony A9. Street portrait shooting was a challenging test and the Sony A9 passed with flying colors. I’ve never gotten as many “keepers” shooting street photography at any prior attempt.
As of this writing, April 4th, Sony has brought the Sony A9 back up to it’s list price of nearly $4,500. The camera has seen heavy discounts in the last years and I’m confident those discounts will return. You can see the Sony A9 on Amazon / Adorama. For all of the shots in this post, I also used the Sony 55mm F1.8. (See on Amazon / Adorama ). My favorite Sony A9 bundle (includes at no additional cost my two favorite tripods) can be found at Adorama here. You can also pick up a Sony A9 used from Adorama or Amazon, starting under $3800.
