The A1 and A9 III are the two Sony bodies working F1 shooters actually carry, and they split the job cleanly. The A1's 50-megapixel stacked sensor gives you the resolution to crop hard into a small nose number from the far side of a run-off area, at up to 30fps. The A9 III trades resolution for a 24.6-megapixel global-shutter sensor and up to 120fps: it freezes a 300 km/h car with zero rolling-shutter skew and no banding under floodlights or trackside LED boards — the two things that quietly ruin number reads at night races. Both use Sony's real-time tracking AF; on the A9 III, AI subject recognition adds a car/vehicle mode that locks onto the car rather than the grandstand behind it.
- →The A9 III's global shutter freezes a full-speed car with zero rolling-shutter skew — vertical edges and number digits stay straight even on a hard 300 km/h pan, where a rolling shutter can lean them.
- →No banding under artificial light: at F1's night rounds — Bahrain, Jeddah, Singapore, Las Vegas — the A9 III's global shutter reads floodlights and flickering LED trackside boards without the exposure stripes that break a rolling-shutter frame.
- →Reach when you need it: the A1's 50-megapixel files let you crop deep into a small, stylised nose number from a distant vantage, and both bodies run real-time tracking AF that holds the car through a braking zone.
RAW format. ARW — roughly 50–100 MB per frame on the 50 MP A1, and roughly 25–50 MB on the 24.6 MP A9 III, depending on the compression setting. · The A1 files are bigger; the A9 III files are smaller but you shoot far more of them — either way, a full F1 weekend is a card take in the thousands of frames, and file management is part of the job, not an afterthought.
Settings by scenario
Panning a corner (slow shutter, follow the car)
- Shutter
- 1/125 – 1/320
- Aperture
- f/8 – f/13
- ISO
- ISO 100, Auto ISO capped low
- AF mode
- AF-C, tracking on (A9 III: car subject recognition)
- Burst
- A1 up to 30fps · A9 III up to 120fps electronic
A lower shutter blurs the background and wheels for speed but softens the number too — keep the frame where the car is squarest to you. On the A1, a hard horizontal pan on electronic shutter can show faint skew; the A9 III's global shutter has none.
Freezing the braking zone or apex
- Shutter
- 1/1600 – 1/3200
- Aperture
- f/2.8 – f/5.6
- ISO
- Auto ISO 100–6400
- AF mode
- AF-C, tracking on, wide or zone
- Burst
- A1 30fps · A9 III up to 120fps electronic
Braking zones point the car's nose toward you — the best chance at a clean number read. Short, deliberate bursts beat a held 120fps burst that buries you in near-identical frames.
Night race under floodlights
- Shutter
- 1/1000 – 1/2000
- Aperture
- f/2.8 – f/4
- ISO
- Auto ISO, raise the cap to 12800–25600
- AF mode
- AF-C, tracking on
- Burst
- A9 III global-shutter electronic; A1 electronic (watch LED banding)
This is where the A9 III earns its place: the global shutter reads floodlights and LED trackside boards without banding, and holds contrast between a stylised number and a dark car. On the A1, turn on anti-flicker and watch for banding under LED boards — switch to mechanical shutter if stripes appear.
Pit lane and grid (close range, mixed light)
- Shutter
- 1/500 – 1/1000
- Aperture
- f/2.8
- ISO
- Auto ISO 100–12800
- AF mode
- AF-C, eye/subject detect, single or zone
- Burst
- Short bursts, 10–20fps
Grid and pit shots are often the cleanest number reads of the weekend — the car is static or slow and the number faces you. These are the easy frames to tag later.
From card to delivery
- 1
Card reader → Photo Mechanic to ingest and cull the burst sequences down to keepers.
- 2
Run the keepers through RaceTagger to batch-detect car numbers and match them against the FIA entry list.
- 3
Import into Lightroom or Capture One — the XMP/IPTC tags ride along on each ARW, no re-keywording.
- 4
Edit your selects, export, and deliver by driver, team or session.
- Files / event
- 3,000–5,000 keepers from a much larger burst take across practice, qualifying and the race — more if you lean on the A9 III's 120fps.
- Storage
- Roughly 200–500 GB per weekend, depending on which body you shoot and how hard you burst.
- Card strategy
- Dual cards: CFexpress Type A to keep up with the 30–120fps buffer, SD UHS-II as overflow and in-camera backup of a session you can't reshoot.
- Tagging time
- one unattended batch pass with RaceTagger · an evening of manual number-typing by hand
The takeaway
The Sony A1 and A9 III will catch the number — reach for the A9 III's global shutter at night rounds and fast pans, the A1's resolution for daylight reach, and shoot the braking zones where the nose faces you. Cull the sequences, let RaceTagger read the car numbers it can see and match them to the FIA entry list (and flag the ones it can't), and your F1 selects reach the editor already labelled by driver and team.
Tag an F1 weekend before your rivals finish culling
RaceTagger reads the car numbers off your ARW files and matches them to the FIA entry list, so your selects hit the editor already labelled by driver and team. 100 photos free every month — 1 credit per photo after that.
Try it free →Pro tips for this camera
Reach for the A9 III at night races, the A1 in daylight.
The A9 III's global shutter kills the two things that wreck number reads under artificial light — rolling-shutter skew on fast pans and banding from floodlights and LED boards. In clean daylight, the A1's extra resolution and reach into a distant nose number matter more.
Shoot braking zones and corner entry, not just the apex.
At the apex the car is angled away and the small nose number compresses; on braking and entry the nose faces you, which is where both you and any AI read the number most reliably.
Burst in short, deliberate taps — especially on the A9 III.
At 120fps a held burst is hundreds of near-identical frames and a full card in seconds; tapping through the corner gives you the readable angles without a culling nightmare.
On the A1, prefer mechanical shutter for hard pans under LED boards.
The A1's stacked sensor is fast but not skew-free, and its electronic shutter can band under flickering LED boards. For hard pans switch to mechanical (up to 10fps) and turn on anti-flicker shooting; the A9 III's global shutter avoids both problems outright.
Get one clean, square-on frame of each car early in the session.
F1 numbers are small and only fully readable when the car faces you; a clean grid, pit-lane or braking-zone frame of each of the twenty cars gives you — and any tagging pass — a reliable reference for that livery and number for the rest of the session.
Questions photographers ask
What shutter speed should I use for F1 panning with a Sony A1 or A9 III?
For panning shots that blur the background, start around 1/125–1/320 and follow the car smoothly through the corner. To freeze a braking zone or apex, jump to 1/1600 or faster. Lower shutter speeds give more sense of speed but soften the small nose number, so keep the frame where the car is squarest to you.
Does the Sony A9 III's global shutter actually help for motorsport?
Yes, in two concrete ways. It has no rolling shutter, so a car crossing your frame at full speed shows no skew — vertical edges and number digits stay straight even on a hard pan. And because the whole frame is captured at one instant, it doesn't band under floodlights or flickering LED trackside boards, which is exactly where night-race frames usually suffer. The trade-off is resolution: 24.6 MP versus the A1's 50 MP.
A1 or A9 III for Formula 1?
The A9 III is the more natural night-and-speed body: global shutter, up to 120fps, zero skew and no LED banding. The A1 wins on resolution — 50 megapixels let you crop hard into a small, distant nose number, and it still shoots up to 30fps. Many shooters carry the A9 III for night rounds and fast pans and the A1 for daylight reach; either one pairs the same way with the rest of the workflow.
Will RaceTagger read Sony ARW RAW files?
Yes. RaceTagger reads ARW directly using the embedded preview, so you can tag straight from your A1 or A9 III RAW files without converting first. JPEG and RAW+JPEG folders work the same way, and the tags are written into the EXIF/XMP/IPTC metadata your editor already reads.
Can AI read the small, stylised numbers on an F1 car?
Sometimes — and it's honest when it can't. F1 driver numbers are small and often overlap sponsor graphics, so at full speed or a sharp angle they can be unreadable, and RaceTagger flags those frames for review instead of guessing. Matching helps a lot: import the twenty-car FIA entry list, and any number it does read is checked against a short, closed list of twenty known numbers — the easiest case to match against — and tied to the right driver and team. Grid, pit-lane and braking-zone frames, where the nose faces you, read far more reliably.
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