3 photos
I want this Sony A9 ($4,498) to meet a horrible death. Something violent, like tumbling down the side of a mountain straight into a crevasse, or something poetic, like dropping 20 feet off the side of a boat into the ocean, then gliding gracefully another 12,000 feet, past a whale or two, its internal spaces steadily crushed by the pressure, to its final resting place with all the albino sea critters, where it will stay forever.
Think I’m not a fan? Quite the opposite. I want this camera to meet a miserable demise because it’ll mean, in some small way, I’ve at least attempted to live up to this tool’s potential. After all, that’s what a camera is, a tool, not a snowflake. If I gin up the $4,500 necessary to purchase the A9 body alone — and then another $2,200 for the indisputably mandatory 24-70mm f/2.8 G-Master lens — I’ll do it because nothing else can get me the results I’m hoping for, and you can bet your sweet bacon I’m not going to walk around with it in some prissy leather sheath. Nor will there be a lens cap anywhere to be found. Instead, this camera — my Holy Grail — will be carried like a military firearm, locked, loaded, and ready at a moment’s notice. It’ll be out and on me, swinging around, not squirreled away in a padded case.
The A9 is a ballerina in a commando’s body.
If I’m doing my job right, an A9 in my possession, just like my current weapon of choice, the Sony A7RII ($2,698), will be subject to considerable peril despite its toe-curling upfront cost — trust me, I have to dig deep to afford my gear — and it will rack up the battle scars to prove it. Indeed, if I can’t have a death like that for the A9, I’ll settle for retiring it to a shelf when it finally can no longer withstand my abuse, with a thousand tiny, shiny silver divots in its black-anodized magnesium-alloy frame. Those silver scars in anodized metal — as you’ll find in the instrument panel of any workhorse aircraft — are the secret Morse code of a life of adventure. You can keep your lightweight plastic housings. I’ll carry the extra weight of the metal just to rack up the dents and dings, leaving a trail of microscopic black metal flakes around the world. Hopefully, each one will have been traded for a single fantastic image.
Specs: Sony Alpha A9
