BF. Beautifully Fun. Best Friend. Brilliantly Fast Camera from SIGMA. SIGMA BF

SIGMA Corporation CEO Kazuto Yamaki explained that the name BF stands for Beautiful Foolishness. It comes from The Book of Tea, A Japanese Harmony of Art, Culture, and the Simple Life, written by Okakura Kakuzō in 1906. After studying art in Europe and the United States, he was appointed as director of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in in 1888. Here’s the BF passage:

“Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage… It entered the realm of poetry as one of the polite amusements. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life. The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling with delight, the soughing of the pines is heard in our kettle. Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things.”

The context of “foolishness” here is not negative. In juxtaposing Beautiful with Foolishness, both Kakuzo and Kazuto are elevating something that is normally functional to a level that is artistic, stylish, interesting and perhaps seeking perfection in imperfection.

This is not your father’s mirrorless camera. The SIGMA BF has 4 buttons and a dial. You operate these with your thumb to control the five things that matter the most: shutter speed, aperture, ISO, exposure compensation and look. The shutter release / record start-stop is on top.

February 24, 2025. 9 AM. The new SIGMA BF camera premiered at SIGMA Corporation’s worldwide headquarters in Kawasaki, Kanagawa. It’s an hour ride from Roppongi Hills—west, direction Mt. Fuji.

 

Buckets of Ruinart champagne and strong coffee await. It is 9 am on a cool, crisp, cloudless morning. Guests arrive from around the world: photographers, filmmakers, influencers, press, SIGMA global officers, distributors, resellers.

Kazuto Yamaki, CEO of SIGMA, takes the stage in a giant tent. After a brief company history, presentation of SIGMA’s new logo and branding, a new 16-300 (longest range F3.5-6.7 DC OS APS-C zoom) and 300-600 F5 DG OS (ightweight and with enough image stabilization to use handheld) and announcing that the DN designation is no more (as SIGMA plans to provide lenses only for mirrorless cameras)–the dramatic moment arrives. The SIGMA BF.

The BF camera concept evolved as Mr. Yamaki asked how SIGMA could contribute to the imaging industry in a era when smartphones were capturing so many images.

It was time to streamline the act of photography with a new concept, with radical simplicity, celebrating the art of engineering and engineering for art, photography for happy moments, for memorable occasions…a modern day camera obscura.

 

It takes 7 hours to machine each SIGMA BF unibody from a solid block of aluminum. The styling may remind you of a unibody aluminum MacBook Pro. Slim, stylish, lightweight–this is a constant companion camera to take everywhere. It’s photography as art and style and fashion. I took a pre-release BF on a street photography walk around Tokyo the following day. “It looks so cool,” was the comment often heard. It seems that almost everyone in Tokyo is a photographer and they asked to try it. We all agreed on how simple and intuitive it is. You don’t need an FDTimes in-depth tutorial. You don’t dive deep into menus. It takes less than two minutes to figure it all out. Beautifully Fast.

Narrower than the average smartphone and about twice as thick, its L-Mount pairs beautifully with SIGMA Contemporary lenses or any L-Mount Alliance lens (SIGMA, Leica, Lumix, etc) or any cine lens with a L adapter.

There’s 6K L-Log video, as well as H.264 and 265. And framelines. Of course, it’s full frame (35.9 x 23.9 mm 24.6 MP back-illuminated CMOS sensor. Maximum 3:2 for stills, 16:9 for cine. Here’s a Beautifully Functional Directors Finder.

The BF Camera is a new way to think differently about photography and cine. It relinquishes the multitude of modes, buttons and dials dedicated to singular functions. Mr. Yamaki said, “these were holdovers from the analog film days. The BF camera’s most important thing is its simplicity. We wanted to create the easiest camera to use. While the lens remains the soul of photography, the camera still profoundly shapes the images we take — directly, indirectly, even subconsciously. Without compromising on features or performance, the BF has a design that removes everything that distracts from your interactions with the image. The BF presents a pure photographic experience free of frustration.”

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