The Sigma BF camera is beautifully impractical

Dramatic design heavy aesthetic. A 24-megapixel sensor provides excellent image quality. Offers 6K video with L-Log support. Surprisingly good autofocus.

Limitations abound, know what you’re getting yourself into.

Sigma has a long history of liberation, let’s call them, eccentric cameras. Last year, the brand released the BF, which continues this tradition. Because it’s very different and lacks features like a mechanical shutter, viewfinder, and storage card slot, among others, I wanted to spend a little more time on it before passing judgment. After using it for months, I decided that the Sigma BF was the perfect camera for people who enjoy using cameras more than just taking photos.

I don’t necessarily mean this as a slight – I think it’s okay to love the tool without worrying about the fruits of your labor. I have quite a collection of antique hand planes that I use very rarely, but they look really nice on display. I understand. This design approach has consequences, however, and one of them is that the Sigma BF can be frustrating when you’re trying to take photos.

Beautiful madness

The Sigma BF takes its name from the expression “beautiful madness”, which Sigma took from a poem by The book of tea. I mention this because its name clearly sets the stage for what the Sigma BF aims to accomplish. The camera doesn’t try to compete with high-end full-frame cameras from Sony, Canon, Nikon, or any other traditional manufacturer. In fact, Sigma seems to have known it couldn’t take on these heavy hitters, so it built its own playground. The success or failure of the BF ultimately depends entirely on you and whether you belong in Sigma’s magnificent domain of (potentially) nonsense.

Let’s start with the basics: dirt on the field, so to speak. The design choices here are purely about the aesthetics of the camera, not how it works. I might debate whether this is good or bad, but either way, it’s important to know before considering purchasing one.

In my 15 years of reviewing cameras, I’ve always refused to use the phrase “feels great in the hand”, but hey, I’m going to get very close to it now because I think it’s important to say that the Sigma BF feels great. bad in the hand. Bad enough that no one in the design process could have missed it. The body is a single piece of machined aluminum, a handsome metal box with no concessions to pedestrian concerns like ergonomics. It’s hard to hold no matter how you try to do it. A one-handed hold seems downright dangerous; using both hands works, but the BF still feels clunky and pointy. Because, well, it is.

The simple truth is that this camera is unpleasant to hold for long periods of time. You could get around that with a third-party handlebut then you lose the aesthetic appeal, and at that point you’re going against the spirit of the thing.

The BF features a 24-megapixel full-frame sensor in a very blocky and extremely minimalist body. The body is lightweight and available in black or silver. You need L-mount lenses. Sigma provided me with a 35 f/2 DG lens, as well as a 90 f/2.8 DG. I’ve mostly shot with the 35, which weighs about the same as the body and seems pretty well balanced. I would be curious to try it Sigma 45 f/2.8 DG ($619)which is slightly smaller and lighter and might feel better on BF’s body. Pancake lenses would be even better than this, but so far Sigma hasn’t made any for this body.

After months of shooting with it, I don’t mind that it’s big and hard to hold. The only thing that bothers me about the overly designed body is that there is only one strap anchor, which means you are limited to using wrist straps exclusively. I find this odd, simply because it seems like at least one market for the BF is one that likes to have an aesthetically pleasing camera around their neck, which isn’t possible here. There may be straps that would allow it to be hung vertically, with both sides of the strap on the single anchor point, but none of the straps I tried worked that way; the anchor point was too small to attach both sides of a strap.

Although it is difficult to hold and attach to oneself, I like the overall design of the camera body. I like the button layout, which consists of four buttons and a rocker wheel. I also like that only one button is a real physical button, and the others are haptic. The menu and control system are well designed and functional, and I found the little electronic window that displays relevant information depending on what you’re doing (battery life, f-stop, shutter speed, etc.) really nice.

The downside to the camera’s minimalism is that it’s downright bulky in fully manual mode. The lack of dials requires adjusting shutter speeds, and ISO requires accessing menus using the touchscreen. After a few days of work, I realized that the Sigma BF may be full frame, but for practical use it is more of a compact camera. I got all my best shots in what I’ll call aperture priority mode, with the ISO and shutter set to auto, while I controlled the aperture via the lens.

The image quality is excellent. The 24-megapixel sensor is very sharp, and while it would be nice to have something more like 36-megapixels for better cropping ability, I never felt limited by the sensor. I shot mostly RAW photos and really liked Sigma’s color rendition, which produced a distinctive, cool tone. Sigma offers film simulations that you can use to emulate different looks when shooting JPGs, but I haven’t used them beyond testing. I also found them more interesting when recording video than still images.

Surprisingly for a camera that looks a lot like a camera, the BF is capable of taking very nice videos. The specs aren’t top-of-the-line, but it can shoot L-log 6K, which I think has a wonderful, slightly noisy look that gives it a cinematic quality when color grading in post-production. I like it more than you get with most cameras these days, looking too sharp and almost clinical, but that’s a matter of personal taste.

The high quality of the autofocus system also impressed me. Although it’s not my first choice for sports photography, the autofocus is very fast and eye detection almost always works. It sometimes missed focus when shooting at its maximum speed (8 frames per second), but it was no worse than Fujifilm’s X100VI autofocus.

Missing parts

Sigma has deliberately left out a number of features that are typically expected from cameras in this league. There’s no mechanical shutter, no viewfinder, no storage card slot, no in-built image stabilization (IBIS), no Wi-Fi or Bluetooth to connect to other devices, no hot shoe (or cold shoe), and no mic or headphone jack.

Of these notable omissions, the most serious is the mechanical shutter. The rolling shutter, where the scene is recorded gradually, rather than all at once as a mechanical shutter does, produces distortions of fast-moving objects, as well as other effects. There’s no way around this. The BF will exhibit distortion and banding (horizontal bands of light and dark caused by the sensor registering the flicker of artificial lights) in many common shooting situations. Try taking a photo of a train, a kid hitting a baseball, or anything under artificial lighting, and you’ll definitely see distortion and banding in your photos. This isn’t necessarily the end of the world, but it does impose some limitations that you won’t find in most comparable cameras on the market. It’s also something you probably won’t notice on site because the rear window isn’t great (more on that below).

The rest of these omissions don’t bother me that much. Would it be nice to have in-body image stabilization (IBIS)? Sure, but I’ve shot many cameras without one. Not having IBIS is a limitation to be aware of, but not one you can’t get around (unlike not having a mechanical shutter). Go back to the old rule of keeping your shutter speeds above the focal length of your lens, and you won’t have problems with missing IBIS.

Then there’s the missing removable storage. Yes, I would prefer a map; it’s simply easier to swap a card in the field. But the BF has 256GB of onboard storage. I can’t remember the last time I took enough images to fill that much space before returning to my laptop to download them. That is to say, 256 GB of storage is sufficient for the non-professional photographer.

The main problem for me is the lack of a viewfinder. I always prefer to shoot through a viewfinder. It’s just a matter of muscle memory: give me a camera and I’ll hold it to my eyes. If you also like a viewfinder, this is not the camera for you.

Another problem with the lack of a viewfinder is that the rear screen is almost unusable in direct sunlight. It’s just too dark to compose accurately. The rear window also doesn’t tilt or move at all, meaning if you like to shoot from the hip, you won’t be able to use it at all. If you want to get an unusual angle, such as from the ground, be prepared to lie down to frame it.

You can turn the screen brightness up to maximum, which helps a little when you’re out in the sun, but it’s still difficult to use in broad daylight. Having the screen brightness at maximum also hurts the already paltry battery life. Sigma claims the BF can shoot around 260 images on a single charge, but this drops significantly if you need to mount the display in broad daylight. I found that in bright sunlight I rarely got more than two to three hours of shooting time on a single charge.

Should you buy it?

It may seem like the Sigma BF has serious limitations, and it does, especially when you compare the specs to other cameras in the BF’s $2,200 price range. However, limitations can be a good thing. Without limitations, you have nothing to build on. This is not a camera intended for the “spray and pray” style of shooting. This camera requires some thought to use it well. This requires being mindful of your limitations and working within them. If you do this, the BF is capable of making great images.

While I wouldn’t recommend the Sigma BF to most people, there are undoubtedly photographers who will love it not in spite of original design choices, but because of them. I expect this to be one of those cameras that will achieve cult status in 20 years.

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