Sigma’s CEO Wants to Make a ‘Serious’ Camera Worthy of Its New 300-600mm

Last week, Sigma’s CEO Kazuto Yamaki sat down with PetaPixel to talk about its new lenses and BF camera. As part of that discussion, Yamaki revealed that he doesn’t always want to make unusual cameras but also desires to create a “serious” camera worthy of the new 300-600mm f/4.

In the past, Sigma manufactured cameras that were more akin to their contemporaries but in recent years has focused its efforts entirely on the unusual or unexpected.

“Customers are looking for something new, something exciting, which is different from the mainstream camera lenses today. So always our customers, [our] users, are quite inspiring to us,” Yamaki said. While he is referring to his company’s endeavors with optics, that philosophy seems to have expanded to camera production, too, which Yamaki confirms later in the interview.

“I think it’s a Sigma’s mission to provide something different from others,” he says.

However, Yamaki’s camera design mission won’t likely live in this unusual territory forever.

“Of course, my dream in the future is to make a very serious camera which can be used with this kind of camera lens,” he added, pointing to the new Sigma 300-600mm f/4 DG OS lens. “But right now, probably people expect Sigma to do something different from others. So this is just one of the ideas we have. But in the future, I’d like to make it very seriously.”

The use of the word “serious” to describe a camera capable of taking full advantage of the 300-600mm f/4 DG OS lens is important. Yamaki had previously explained that the Sigma BF camera was named after a line from a poem in Okura Tenshin’s The Book of Tea and stands for “beautiful foolishness.”

The BF is designed to be a playful experience, one that allows photographers to revel in the joy of photography and the simple things — life’s “beautiful foolishness.” It is, therefore, not a serious camera for serious photographers and is not meant to be. It lacks a hot shoe, an electronic viewfinder, a majority of the buttons and control dials enthusiast photographers are used to, and it doesn’t even have a memory card slot. So while the 300-600mm f/4 DG OS could be used with the Sigma BF, it’s probably not recommended.

It has been so long since Sigma created a camera for “serious” photography that it’s hard to think what such a design might look like or how it would stack up against Sony, Canon, or Nikon’s options. It is encouraging to hear, however, that Sigma’s CEO does want to bring something to market that could live in this space. When it does, photographers should expect a design philosophy that won’t restrict it to the BF’s incredibly low production output of just nine cameras per day — it’ll likely be far too popular for this to make sense.

PetaPixel‘s full interview with Kazuto Yamaki can be seen and heard on the February 26, 2025 episode of the PetaPixel Podcast.