This is Sony's first true professional mirrorless camera. The professional camera industry is going through a paradigm shift. From SLRs (cameras with a mirrors

This is Sony's first true professional mirrorless camera. The professional camera industry is going through a paradigm shift. From SLRs (cameras with a mirrors that flap with each photo and make the unique clack sound) to Mirrorless. You needed the mirror during the film days, because you needed to see what the lens was seeing. Now, you can capture what the lens is seeing from the sensor into an electronic viewfinder. However, there is still an opinion that an SLR (Nikon or Canon) is a real professional tool. From built quality, to focus speed (phase detect), frames/second, battery life, dual card capture, etc. Sony's new A9 is designed to go head to head against the top of the line professional cameras from Nikon and Canon. At least on many of the specs. That said, I'm still not convinced it's going to be as robust as a Nikon D5 or Canon's 1Dx, etc. I'm a Nikon user now (was canon for a long time) and I abuse my camera a lot. From rain, extreme cold, etc. And the camera continues to work. Many of my photographer friends on FB are unhappy with reliability of the Sony's A7 series and switched back to Canon and Nikon due to reliability issues. So even though the A9 has all the specs, it may still not be the camera pros shooting Olympics, etc. switch to.