Alpha Academy Tennis Japan Open 2025/09/22

As I introduced in this article, I watched and photographed a Kinoshita Group Tennis Japan Open match from a courtside seat where professional photographers sit, as part of an Alpha Academy project.
The location was Ariake Coliseum.
It was right after crossing the pedestrian bridge on the opposite side of the exhibition hall after exiting Kokusai-tenjijo Station on the Rinkai Line.

The seating is as shown in the image below.
The height of the court was the same as the height of my knees while sitting.
These seats aren't usually for sale, right? Probably lol (of course, even the front row of regular seats is quite low).
By the way, the paper ticket I received was for general admission for the day, so it was possible to go to other places if I wanted to sit in the upper stands.

After meeting up with the staff, there was a lecture on the basic usage of the camera and lens provided for the event:
Alpha 9 III (ILCE-9M3)
FE 70-200mm F2.8 GM OSS II (SEL70200GM2)
Since this was an Alpha Academy beginner's course, I listened as a way to confirm what I already knew.
(Of course, you can also hear tips for sports photography on-site).
I own both, but I inserted my own card into the borrowed equipment to shoot.

On this day, I mainly used the equipment I borrowed at first.
Since it was my first time shooting tennis, I used continuous shooting a lot and filled up the memory. The battery also dropped below 15%.
It was mentioned that the battery could be replaced in the afternoon, but I wanted to try out my own Alpha 1 II and 300mm prime lens that I brought, so I started using them midway through the first match.

The following photos have no presets applied and are at their original size unless otherwise noted.
Noise reduction has been applied to all of them.

Below, the second match.
At the beginning of the shoot, the focus would frequently get pulled (completely) to the white lines of the net or the faces of the spectators.
Focus area set to Tracking: Spot S.
Set slightly above the center, around where the face/head would be.
While checking to see if the focus frame appeared so that I could track by half-pressing the shutter button,
the number of good shots finally started to increase.

Whether it's because I got used to shooting at the net,or because the Alpha 1 II was maintaining focus as I intended,

I'm not quite sure.

In this match, I saw both players frequently coming to the net to try and win the point.
The people who joined me seemed to play tennis, so I asked them about it.
They explained it in detail, but said that since the first match kept ending in short rallies, it didn't turn into a tactical battle, so there were no situations where they would come to the net.
The person was a beginner with a camera, but they said they were reading the rallies and aiming to shoot at the timing and position they predicted the ball would come to.
Wow.
Knowing or not knowing the sport you are photographing really does affect your shooting activity.

I expected it to end around 2:00 PM, but since the first match had many games and dragged on, I ended up staying on-site until 4:00 PM.
One of the Alpha Academy staff members was someone who also helped me out at the World Athletics Championships.
All the staff members were very hospitable, making it easy to enjoy the event.
Thank you very much.

Now, about this event where I borrowed a camera and lens.
I actually own both of them myself, so this is a comparison with the Alpha 1 II + 300mm I brought with me.

As for the lens, when it comes to what you can capture once you press the shutter, the GM prime lens is truly amazing. The high-resolution Alpha 1 II must also be contributing to the results.
However, the SEL70200GM2 is a very good telephoto zoom. The speed of the AF and its lightness make it very easy to use. I've posted many images, and the quality is good, isn't it?
You can get images like this with a telephoto zoom? Isn't that wonderful!

Regarding the camera, there were points where I felt the ability to maintain AF at the net was more due to the camera body's performance than the lens, and there is also a big difference due to the pixel count, which is about double (Alpha 1 II approx. 50.1 megapixels, Alpha 9 III approx. 24.6 megapixels).

For tennis, 30 fps is almost enough for continuous shooting, so if we don't compare the difference in continuous shooting speed between the Alpha 1 II's 30 fps and the Alpha 9 III's 120 fps...
The advantage of the Alpha 9 III is its distortion-free, faithful image reproduction.
The Alpha 1 II has high physical detail reproduction capability due to its high pixel density.

That's how it feels.
I looked over everything, and since the rackets aren't distorted, I think the Alpha 1 II also has sufficient capability.

By combining a stacked structure with a high-performance AD converter (a component that converts analog signals to digital signals), the time required to read out all pixels is shortened.
As a result, the time lag between the start of readout and the start/end of exposure for the final row becomes extremely small, so even when shooting fast-moving subjects, the amount the subject moves during that time is small, which apparently results in significantly suppressed rolling shutter distortion.

I bring up the Alpha 9 III as a speed model, but the flagship Alpha 1 II also has the advantage of high resolution, so it might be an all-rounder if you don't need speeds around 120 fps.
I wonder if the Alpha 9 III's turn will be in jeopardy in the future...

Besides that, the ISO values of the images fluctuate quite a bit.
I heard the roof of this court closes when it rains, but it was cloudy and sunny on this day (I was glad it wasn't hot).
This is because the amount of light was fluctuating significantly.
It didn't have to go up during the day, but in this last image at 3:40 PM, it has gone up to 4000.
Come to think of it, I think I had the white balance set to Auto or 5500 K in Kelvin.

I enjoyed my first tennis shoot.
In the future, I'd like to engage in activities to find the advantages of the Alpha 9 III in various fast sports like badminton or table tennis lol