Sony's new A9 camera: 24MP, shoots amazing 4K video

Sony is going on the offensive in the camera market, launching its new Alpha A9 camera - the most expensive, feature-rich mirrorless camera yet.

Sony's new A9 snapper features a full-frame stacked CMOS sensor, a first ever, where speed - and not resolution, is king. Sony has its Alpha 7R II camera and its huge 42.4-megapixel sensor, but Sony opted for a 24.2-megapixel sensor on the A9. Alpha A9 can shoot up to 241 RAW, full-frame images at 20FPS - courtesy of Sony making the A9 up to 20x faster at processing speeds over previous models.

There's also a 693-point focal plane phase detection autofocus that is capable of 60 AF/AE tracking calculations per second.

Inside of the Alpha A9 we have an upgraded BIONZ processor, which allows for "complex erratic motion with higher accuracy than ever before". There's also a QVGA, 3686K dot OLED viewfinder, which is the highest-res, and brightest model Sony has ever used. Sony is promising 2.2x the battery life of the previous-gen A7 models, while giving us 2 x media slots with one of them being high-speed UHS-II SD compliant.

Engadget reports that the new A9 camera supports 4K video recoring, but "reads out the entire full-frame sensor at 6K" and then the A9 oversamples it to produce "high quality 4K footage with exceptional detail and depth".

Details on Sony Alpha A9 camera:

When: May 25 in the US, and in June for Europe

How Much: $4500 in the US, €5,300 in Europe

Why: It's one of the best cameras on the market