Sony Alpha A99

Image quality comparison
Compare the Sony A99 to its competitors in detail, color, noise and noise suppression across a range of ISOs.
In-depth image analysis
In-depth analysis of Sony A99 test images, focusing on factors like color, white balance, sharpness, active D-lighting, dynamic range, low light and print quality.
High ISO NR
Noise suppression is the enemy of detail at High ISO's. See how the Sony A99 performs in this difficult task.
RAW Comparison
Compare the A99 to its competitors (in the raw).

Sony A99 Raw Image Quality

We used to convert raw files used for comparison crops with dcraw (an excellent freeware raw converter), as we could count on dcraw not to apply any noise reduction, sharpening or other corrections. Lately, though, we've switched to Adobe Camera Raw with its noise reduction and sharpening options set to zero. We've found conversions made with recent versions of ACR to be almost identical to dcraw when dcraw's demosaicing option is set to match ACR's method, so we're pretty sure ACR isn't applying any noise reduction "under the hood" like it used to.

Below are crops from Sony A99 raw files compared to raw files from other high-resolution full-frame DSLRs:

Sony A99
versus
Canon 5D Mark III, Nikon D600, and Sony A900
Raw, no Noise Reduction, no Sharpening,
Simulated Daylight
Sony
Alpha A99
Canon
5D Mark III
Nikon
D600
Sony
Alpha A900
I
S
O

5
0
N/A
ISO 50
not supported
I
S
O

1
0
0
I
S
O

2
0
0
I
S
O

4
0
0
I
S
O

8
0
0
I
S
O

1
6
0
0
I
S
O

3
2
0
0
I
S
O

6
4
0
0
I
S
O

1
2
8
0
0
N/A
ISO 12,800
not supported
I
S
O

2
5
6
0
0
N/A
ISO 12,800
not supported
I
S
O

5
1
2
0
0
N/A,
ISO 51,200 not
supported.
N/A,
ISO 51,200 not
supported.
N/A,
ISO 51,200 not
supported.
I
S
O

1
0
2
4
0
0
N/A,
ISO 102,400 not
supported.
N/A,
ISO 102,400 not
supported.
N/A,
ISO 102,400 not
supported.
Sony
A99
Canon
5D Mark III
Nikon
D600
Sony
A900

Here, we can see the Sony A99 lags the Canon 5D Mark III and Nikon D600 a bit in terms of high ISO noise, though it does much better than Sony's full-frame A900 digital SLR at higher ISOs, even though they use very similar resolution and size sensors. This is even more impressive given the fact that the A99 loses some light to its SLT mirror. Just goes to show how far sensor performance has come since 2008 when the Sony A900 was released. Interestingly, the older A900 does seem to do a little better with reds than the Sony A99 does at low to moderate ISOs, though.