In February, Sigma announced the Sigma BF. It is a full-frame, interchangeable lens digital camera with only a shutter launch, a dial and three buttons. That minimalism speaks to me, and I felt the BF was doubtlessly transformative. Images is certainly one of my favourite hobbies, and I’ve all the time felt fashionable cameras are too difficult. After I obtained a unit of the Sigma BF to check, I wished to find it irresistible. Sadly, it could be too easy.
All of it begins with the design. The Sigma BF is without doubt one of the trade’s few unibody cameras. It is carved from a single slab of aluminum, a course of Sigma says takes seven hours to finish. The result’s a digital camera not like any I’ve used earlier than, with construct high quality that surpasses both of my present Fujifilm fashions, the X-E3 and X-S20. Now, I do know what you are considering: The BF seems to be like an ergonomic nightmare. Surprisingly, it is not too unhealthy, due to the inclusion of two beveled edges the place your arms meet the underside of the digital camera physique.
Nonetheless, it is lacking a couple of options that will have made it extra snug to make use of, probably because of the limitations of its unibody design. For one, a correct grip would have been good, particularly if you’re utilizing a heavy 50mm lens just like the one Sigma despatched me for testing. The BF can be lacking a sizzling shoe mount, so third-party thumb grips are off the desk. Most annoying of all, it solely has a single strap eyelet, so if you happen to do not wish to use a neck strap, you may want one which attaches to the digital camera’s tripod mount. I do not personal a type of, so I needed to carry across the $2,000 BF in my hand the complete time I used to be utilizing it. You’ll be able to think about how that felt.
The BF provides a really totally different taking pictures expertise out of your typical digital digital camera. As I discussed, it has solely a shutter launch, a single dial and three buttons (one for powering the digital camera on and off, one for reviewing your pictures and pictures and one for accessing the overflow menu). There’s additionally a touchscreen, however you would not understand it at first, as a result of apart from when choosing a spotlight level and toggling some choices, you will not be utilizing it a lot whereas taking pictures.
The BF’s one dial is the first strategy to work together with the digital camera. To regulate your publicity, you first press left or proper on the dial to cycle to a selected setting, after which spin it to tweak the degrees as desired. A second smaller display above the dial means that you can alter these parameters with out interacting with the primary show.
Alternatively, you may press down on the middle of the dial to open the BF’s “twin layer” menu system. Because the identify suggests, Sigma has organized most of what you may want throughout two ranges of menus. For instance, say you wish to change the digital camera from matrix to identify metering. That includes urgent down on the dial, scrolling over to one of many publicity settings, tapping the middle of the dial once more, after which utilizing your thumb to press the touchscreen and allow spot metering. Accessing many of the settings you may want will not be as tedious, however this worst case state of affairs demonstrates the place the expertise of taking pictures with the Sigma BF falls quick.
The BF is not nice for capturing fleeting moments. In ditching many of the bodily controls fashionable cameras are recognized for, the Sigma BF makes it tough to vary a number of settings concurrently. I used to be most irritated by the BF each time I wished to shoot a fast-moving scene.
On certainly one of my picture walks with the Sigma BF, I noticed a father using a motorbike together with his son within the seat behind him. With my X-E3 or almost another digital camera, capturing that second would have been easy. I may have modified the drive mode, focus system and shutter pace independently of each other. On the BF, I needed to alter every setting consecutively. By the point I used to be performed, the daddy and son had been lengthy gone.
A few of the BF’s shortcomings may very well be addressed if Sigma at the least allowed you to edit the short settings display to point out fewer choices. I do not want quick access to vary issues just like the facet ratio, for instance. In 2025, each new digital camera ships with a very bloated menu system, and in that regard the Sigma BF is a breath of contemporary air. Nevertheless, permitting the person to make their very own tweaks would have made for a a lot better expertise.
And that’s the factor: With the BF, Sigma breaks digital camera interface conventions which might be conventions for good purpose. Let me provide you with one of many extra irritating examples: The digital camera inexplicably would not provide a simple strategy to measure the publicity of a scene. There was no meter to point whether or not I used to be about to under- or overexpose a shot, and I could not add one to the primary display.
The one approach I may see a histogram, my most popular technique for nailing publicity, was to entry the second layer of the interface from one of many seize settings. That is an particularly confounding choice as a result of you may half press the shutter to make fast publicity compensation changes with the management dial, however as quickly as you do, the BF jumps out of no matter menu you had been . If digging by way of menus is not your factor, there are two dwell view overlays you may allow to see if you happen to’ve clipped your shadows or highlights. The primary is your traditional zebra sample. The second, which Sigma calls False Colour, turns many of the display grayscale and makes use of warning colours. Neither felt as exact as a correct publicity meter or histogram.
On paper, the BF is a good digital camera for video, with help for 6K recording, HEVC encoding and L-Log. Sadly, the BF’s minimalism is a weak point right here too. To begin, framing a shot is a problem for the reason that digital camera has a hard and fast display. Getting usable footage can be difficult. The BF would not provide in-body picture stabilization, and whereas there are a couple of L-mount lenses with built-in stabilization, most would not be sensible to make use of with the BF as a result of their measurement and weight.
In the event you’ve gotten this far, you are most likely questioning if I’ve one thing optimistic to say in regards to the BF. Effectively, the very best factor in regards to the digital camera is that it takes genuinely nice pictures, which is what makes all its shortcomings all of the extra irritating. The 24-megapixel, bottom illuminated sensor and Sigma’s lenses seize and render element superbly with out being scientific. The BF additionally has nice topic detection autofocus that makes taking pictures portraits of individuals and pets simple.
The Sigma BF has some fascinating concepts about what a digital camera can seem like in 2025, however these concepts are sometimes marred by poor execution. As a primary stab at a minimalist digital camera, the BF has sufficient going for it, and with refinement, I may see future variations evolving into one thing particular. For instance, I’d like to see Sigma discover a strategy to embrace a flip-out display within the BF’s unibody body. Till then, $2,000 is quite a bit to ask for a digital camera that may very well be a lot extra.
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