After letting rival camera companies catch up for the last few years, Sony laid down a gauntlet with the 24.6-megapixel A9 III. It’s the world’s first mirrorless camera with a global shutter, a much-awaited holy grail feature. It completely eliminates rolling shutter distortion found on CMOS cameras by reading the entire sensor at once. It also boosts speed and removes the need for a mechanical shutter. As a pioneering product, it’s not cheap at $6,000, but you can expect the technology to come down in price in the future. And there is a downside: Image quality is reduced compared to regular cameras, due to the nature of a global shutter. Is it worth trading off image quality for extra speed and lack of distortion, especially compared to stacked sensor cameras that are already pretty quick? To find out, me and my pro photographer friends put a final production model through a variety of shooting scenarios. Sony 92 100 Sony A9 III Sony’s A9 III is the first mainstream camera with a gl