“This camera is not a photo or video camera. It's both.” Rohn Starling is a content creator who helps churches around the world. He’s used a lot of cameras in his career and now as part of Church Production’s Road Test User Experience, he’s trying out the Sony A9 Mark III Full-frame Mirrorless Camera.
The Sony Alpha 9 III Camera has received the Church Production Road Tested Certification.
“I think it's powerful,” he explains. “You want to have a camera that's able to switch in a moment, I was able to see how effective these features are, how effective the autofocus is, how effective pre-capture is, how effective the speed of the camera is, how effective it is for me to just switch to video and know what my settings are, lock in, make sure everything's good, and still capture it without missing a moment.”
"...this is actually so helpful. It takes away some of the guesswork for you.” - Rohn Starling
Starling used the camera in several settings at Elevation Church, Victory Church, and others. He used it for shooting the pastor behind the scenes, for congregational worship, and then also for making short-form content to be posted almost immediately after to promote the church. Starling says some surprises include the new grip he says fits his hand better than any he’s used before and a feature called Pre-Capture. “It's really insane what this thing does because you have the ability to take a picture or 50 pictures up to one second all the way up to 0.1 seconds before you actually press your shutter. So, this helps save moments when you're taking pictures. You're moving too fast, you might've been a little late, and it actually enables you to make sure that you get that picture of your pastor smiling or that person actually hugging them,” he says.
“This is the perfect church camera.”
Starling says the A9 Mark III is completely different than any other mirrorless camera he’s ever seen. It has a global shutter which means there’s no rolling shutter when taking an image. It takes a picture all at once. This feature also helps eliminate problems with a moire pattern when taking pictures or video that include an LED video display wall or LED lights. “This is the perfect church camera,” he says. “What's really cool about this camera is it doesn't matter what level that you operate in, whether you are a volunteer, a professional, or someone who's just an aged veteran taking pictures or capturing content, this is actually so helpful. It takes away some of the guesswork for you.”
Sometimes content creators want images – sometimes they want videos. Starling says this camera does it all and does it well. “I'm thoroughly impressed in how that they've continually evolved their cameras to function, not just for myself, but the different amount of type of content creators there are in the world, whether if you do YouTube or a full-time YouTuber or a live streamer or churchgoer, whatever it might be, or you're just an avid photographer, there's a specific camera for you. I wanted a camera that did everything, and this is definitely that camera. I'm team Sony,” Starling concludes.
To see more of Ron Starling’s interview and how he used the A9 Mark III from Sony, watch this video!
