In February, Sigma announced Sigma BF. It is a full-frame, interchangeable lens camera with just one shutter release, one dial and three buttons. He talks to me, and I felt that BF was potentially transformative. Photography is one of my favorite hobbies, and I have always felt that modern cameras are very complex. When I found a unit of Sigma BF to test, I wanted to love it. Unfortunately, it can be very simple.
It all starts with design. Sigma is one of the few unibody cameras in the BF industry. It is engraved from a single slab of aluminum, a process Sigma says that it takes seven hours to complete. The result is a camera that I have used before, with build quality, which crosses my current Fujifilm model, X-E3 and X-S20. Now, I know what you are thinking: BF looks like an ergonomic nightmare. Surprisingly, it’s not very bad, thanks to the inclusion of two bell edges where your hands meet under the camera’s body.
Nevertheless, it is remembering some characteristics, which would have made it more comfortable to use it, likely due to the limitations of its unibody design. For one, a proper grip would have been good, especially when you are using a heavy 50 mm lens such as a sigma sent me for a test. BF is also remembering a hot shoe Mount, so the third -party thumb grip is away from the table. The most annoying of all, only one strap in it is ignorant, so if you do not want to use the neck strap, you will need one that is attached to the tipi mount of the camera. I am not the owner of one of them, so I had to take me around $ 2,000 BF in my hand throughout the time. You can imagine how it felt.
BF provides a very different shooting experience from your specific digital camera. As I mentioned, it has only one shutter release, a single dial and three buttons (to turn on and off a camera, one to review your photos and footage and to reach an overflow menu). There is also a touchscreen, but you will not know it at first, as in addition to selecting the focus point and to the tolegling some options, you will not use it during shooting.
BF is the primary way to interact with a dial camera. To accommodate your exposure, you first press the left or right on the dial to bicycle for a specific setting, and then spin it to tweete the desired levels. Another small screen above the dial allows you to adjust those parameters without interacting with the main display.
Alternatively, you can press on the center of the dial to open the “dual layer” menu system of BF. As the name suggests, Sigma has organized the most that you may need a menu of two levels. For example, it is said that you want to switch the camera for spot metering from the matrix. This includes pressing down on the dial, scrolling on one of the exposure settings, re -tapping the center of the dial, and then using your thumb to press the touchscreen and enable the spot metering. Accessing most of the settings will not be so tedious you, but it shows the worst position where the shooting experience with Sigma BF decreases.
BF is not great to catch fleeting moments. Most physical controls are known for modern cameras in digging, Sigma BF makes it difficult to change several settings simultaneously. I was the most angry with BF whenever I wanted to shoot a fast growing scene.
In one of my photos, Sigma walks with BF, I noticed that a father saw his son riding a bike with his son on the seat. With my X-E3 or almost any other camera, it would be easy to capture that moment. I could change the drive mode, focus system and shutter speed independently from each other. On BF, I had to continuously adjust each setting. By the time I was done, the father and son had left for a long time.
Some shortcomings of BF can be addressed if Sigma at least allows you to edit the quick settings screen to show you less alternatives. For example, I do not need easy access to change things such as aspect ratio. In 2025, every new camera shipblies with a highly bloated menu system, and Sigma BF is a breath of fresh air in this regard. However, it would be for a much better experience to allow the user to make their own twics.
And this is: With BF, the Sigma camera breaks the interface conferences that are conferences for good reason. I should give you one of the more disappointing examples: the camera does not unnecessarily provide an easy way to measure a view. It was no meter to indicate whether I was going to reduce or oversex a shot, and I could not add one to a main screen.
The way I could see a histogram, my favorite method for exposure was to reach another layer of interface from one of the capture settings. This is a particularly confused decision because you can press the shutter to adjust quick exposure compensation with control dial, but as soon as you do, the BF jumps out of whatever menu was looking. If it is not your point to dig through the menu, then there are two live view overlays that you can enable you to see if you have shut down your shadow or highlights. The first is your normal zebra pattern. Second, what Sigma calls the incorrect color, most screen replaces Grassscale and uses warning colors. Neither felt accurate as a proper exposure meter or a histogram.
On paper, BF is a decent camera for video, which has 6K recording, support for HEVC encoding and L-Tog. Unfortunately, BF’s minimalism is also a weakness here. To start, frameing a shot is a challenge because the camera has a certain screen. It is also difficult to get usable footage. BF In-Body Image does not offer stabilization, and while there are some L-mount lenses with underlying stabilization, most will not be practical to use with BF due to their size and weight.
If you have removed it, you probably wondering if I have something positive to say about BF. Well, the best thing about the camera is that it takes really luxurious pictures, which makes all its shortcomings more disappointing. The 24-megapixel, backside Illuminated sensor and Sigma’s lens were beautifully out and presented in detail without being clinical. The BF also has a great topic autofocus that makes the shooting of people and pets easier.
Sigma BF has some interesting views what a camera may look like in 2025, but those ideas are often killed by poor execution. As a stab for the first time in a minimum camera, BF has enough for this, and with refinement, I could see future versions developing something special. For example, I would like to find Sigma a way to include a flip-out screen in BF’s unibody frame. Till then, $ 2,000 has a lot to ask for a camera that can be so high.
