Sony A99 II First Shots: Sample images from Sony’s super-powered top-of-the-line SLT camera

by William Brawley

posted Thursday, December 8, 2016 at 10:45 AM EDT

More Sony sample images straight from our testing lab! It's been four long years since Sony's previous flagship, full-frame SLT camera -- the Sony A99 -- and many were wondering if Sony had all but abandoned their "DSLR" lineup. But fear not, as the tech giant unveiled their super-powered Sony A99 Mark II at this year's Photokina tradeshow and it's now receiving our signature lab treatment.

Sporting a refreshed and smaller yet familiar body design to the original A99, the new A99 II has tons of new features and performance upgrades on the inside. For starters, it sports a similar 42.4-megapixel full-frame CMOS backside-illuminated image sensor as the A7R II with the same 399 on-chip phase-detect AF points. However, being an SLT camera, it also uses a detected phase-detection AF sensor, further adding to its AF performance specs. Furthermore, along with the BIONZ X image processor, the A99 II adds in a dedicated front-end LSI chip for additional horsepower, such as a reported 12fps burst shooting with C-AF and a 50+ frame buffer capacity with RAW. (Yes, that's 50+ 42MP RAW frames at up to 12fps!)

Similar to the A6500, Mike Tomkins recently spent some time with the new A99 II out in Austin, Texas and returned with a raft of real-world images. We've now gotten hands on our review model, and already have our First Shots series of lab sample images for your pixel-peeping pleasure. Here, we have both RAWs and straight-from-camera JPEGs, with images shot at default Noise Reduction and with NR processing disabled (at least to the extent that the camera allows), across the camera's full ISO range.

For the full set of First Shots, head over to the Sony A99 II Samples Page, but if you feel like comparing image quality, jump over to our Comparometer to put the A99 II's lab images up against any other camera we've tested. To get you started, below are a couple of comparisons pitting the Sony A99 II against its predecessor and one of its major competitors, the Canon 5D Mark IV.