The Alpha 1 is a game-changer. This 50.1 megapixel behemoth shoots at a blazingly fast 30 frames per second whilst maintaining continuous autofocus and auto exposure in a compact body. Top it off with 8k at 30 fps, 120 AF/AE calculations per second, and Blackout-free shooting, it begs to ask first-time owners where to begin? We’ve collated five settings from our community to get you started on the ONE and only Alpha 1, which will come in extremely handy if you’re a nature or landscape photographer.

#1 Maximise those MPs with HEIF

If you want to get the best image quality hands down and keep your 50 MP file sizes at a minimum, go to Image Quality on your settings and select HEIF over JPEG. Images captured in High Efficiency Image File Format are smaller in file size and have a higher bit depth, which reduces colour banding. It’s emerging tech growing in compatibility by the day. We recommend it if you’re primarily using a Mac and iOS environment, else stick to JPEG. Don’t forget to select compressed RAW + HEIF/JPEG to give you greater freedom in post-processing. We’ll touch on compression later in this article.

#2 Understand Noise Reduction

Although noise reduction comes in particularly handy for high-speed action shots, there seems to be a consensus amongst seasoned nature and landscape photographers to turn off in-camera noise reduction whenever possible as they would rather do it in post. Especially for photographs in broad daylight, another layer of reduction could reduce its overall detail and sharpness. Under the Image Quality setting, find and turn off High ISO NR and Long Exposure NR.

#3 Record on both Media

The Alpha 1 benefits from having twice the number of card slots. With its large file sizes, it would seem intuitive to combine the card's total storage; however, experience has ultimately favoured peace of mind especially when any chance of data corruption would be disastrous whilst buffering 30 large megapixel frames per second. Most photographers would advise switching on Simultaneous Recording and Auto Switch Media ON. Furthermore, consider getting a CFexpress Type A memory card with write speeds up to 700MB/s to overcome that large buffer effortlessly.

#4 Up the Display Quality

The Alpha 1 is a resolution beast not only in picture quality but also in display quality as seen through its 9.44 million dot High-performance electronic viewfinder and touch panel LCD. You can maximise this already amazing viewing experience by switching the Display Quality under settings to High. Do note that you’ll have to change Finder Frame Rate to Standard before that. This is at the cost of some battery life, but we at the community feel it is well worth the extra charge.

#5 Set your AF Mode to AF-C

This time we get to adjust a physical setting that is a feature of the Alpha 1, the AF Mode top dial. Amongst the options available, we advise switching to continuous focus AF-C in order to achieve your camera’s hallmark feature- shooting 50 MP at 30fps.

Bonus tip - Customisation

You can fully customise over 16 physical buttons throughout the camera based on your shooting preferences. Pressing the Fn button on the rear displays a further 12 customisable menu buttons. We don’t really have the space to aggregate the community’s recommended buttons much less the layout, but you can see the endless opportunities to experiment and alter your camera settings on the fly making the Alpha 1 the ultimate game-changer, get it? We did gather some quick suggestions to try out first: