Sony has announced the latest in its line of popular professional mirrorless cameras: the A9 III. It’s a $5,999 full-frame camera with a stacked 24.6-megapixel sensor that succeeds the A9 II released four years ago. But the most important thing about the A9 III is its new shutter.
The A9 III is the first full-frame camera to use a global shutter. This allows it to expose every pixel at the same time so there is no distortion in both stills and video. Within most mirrorless cameras, such as the Canon R5, Panasonic GH5, and Nikon Z9, there is a rolling shutter. Rolling shutters capture an image by exposing row by row of pixels, which can lead to distortion. Below is a graphic from Lensrentals.com that shows this difference well.