In February, Sigma announced Sigma BF. It is just a shutter release, a dial and a full frame, exchange lens camera with three buttons. It at least talks to me, and I noticed that BF is probably a change. Photography is one of my favorite hobbies, and I have always found that modern cameras are very complicated. When I received a unit of Sigma BF for testing, I wanted to love it. Unfortunately, this can be very easy.
It all starts with the design. Sigma is one of the few UNBD cameras in the BF industry. It is dug from the same aluminum slab, one of the process Sigma says it takes seven hours to complete. The result is a camera that I have used earlier, which has blood quality that is ahead of one of my existing Fijphmal models, X-3 and XS20. Now, I know what you are thinking: BF looks like an aergonomic nightmare. Surprisingly, it is not too bad, thanks to adding two beverage edges where your hands meet under the camera body.
Nevertheless, it does not have some features that make it more comfortable in its use, likely to cause its unboded design limits. One, a proper grip is good, especially when you use a heavy 50 mm lens as Sigma sent me for testing. The hot shoe mount in the BF is also missing, so the third party thumb grip is off the table. The most disturbing, it contains only one strap lyric, so if you do not want to use the neck strap, you will need to connect to the camera tripod mount. I don’t own any of them, so I had to take around $ 2,000 BF all the time in my hand. You can imagine how it felt.
BF offers a very different experience of shooting from your normal digital camera. As I mentioned, it has only one shutter release, the same dial and three buttons (to turn on and off a camera, one to review your photos and footage and access an overflow menu). There is also a touch screen, but you won’t know it at first, because when you choose the focus point and togel some options, you will not use it much during the shooting.
The main way to communicate with a BF’s dial camera. To adjust your exposure, you first press the left or right on the dial to rotate on a specific setting, and then rotate it to adapt to the desired level. The second small screen above the dial allows you to adjust these parameters without interacting with the central display.
As an alternative, you can suppress the BF’s “dual layer” menu system to the dial center to open. As the name suggests, Sigma has arranged most of the qualifications you need on two levels of the menu. For example, you want to change the camera on the spottering from the matrix. This includes pressing the dial, scrolling on one of the exhibition settings, re -tapping the dial center, and then using your thumb to suppress the touch screen and enable spot metering. You will not need to access most of the settings, it will not be so painful, but the worst situation shows where the shooting experience with Sigma BF is less.
BF is not very good to capture the moments of BF. Most physical control is known for modern camera, Sigma BF has made it difficult to change multiple settings simultaneously. Whenever I wanted to shoot a fast -moving scene, I was the most angry with the BF.
A photo of mine runs with Sigma BF, I saw a father riding a motorcycle with his son, who was on the seat behind it. With my X-E3 or any other camera, it would be easy to capture the moment. I could replace the drive mode, the focus system and the shutter speed freely. On BF, I had to adjust each sequence permanently. When I was, the father and son had gone too far.
Some of the BF’s shortcomings may be focused if Sigma at least allows you to edit the quick settings screen to display low options. For example, I don’t need easy access to change things like aspect ratio. In 2025, each new camera plane ship with an excessive flowering menu system, and in this regard, Sigma BF has fresh air breath. However, allowing the user to make their own opportunities makes Made for a very better experience.
And that’s: with BF, Sigma broke the camera interface convention that is a good reason. I give you another disappointing example: The camera does not offer an easy way to measure a scene. There was no meter to indicate whether I was going to reduce the shot or not, and I could not add anyone to the main screen.
I can see a histogram, my preferred method for displaying nails, was to access the second layer of interface from any of the arrest settings. This is a particularly confused decision because you press the shutter half to make quick exposure compensation adjustment with the control dial, but as you do, BF goes out of whatever menu you are looking for. If you are not your thing to dig through menus, there are two direct views that you can be able to see if you have tied your shadows or highlights. The first is your usual zebra model. Second, what Sigma calls the wrong color, mostly turns the screen gray scale and uses warning colors. Nor did the proper exhibition felt exactly like a meter or histogram.
On paper, BF is a decent camera for video, which supports 6K recording, HEVC encoding and L-L-LG. Unfortunately, BF’s minismism is also a weakness. To start, building a shot is a challenge because there is a fixed screen of the camera. It is also difficult to get usable footage. BF does not offer physical image stability, and while there are some L -Mount lens with built -in stability, mostly will not be practically practical to use with BF because of its size and weight.
If you’ve got it so far, you are probably wondering if I have something positive about BF. Well, the best thing about the camera is that it takes real images, which makes all its shortcomings even more disappointing. 24 megapixels, back side bright sensors and lenses of Sigma are detailed in detail without being clinical. The BF also has a great article detection autofox that simplifies people and pet shooting pictures.
Sigma BF has some interesting ideas that can look like a camera in 2025, but these ideas are often damaged by poor execution. As the first war in a seeded camera, the BF has a considerable extent for it, and with the dispersion, I can see the future version into something special. For example, I would love to see Sigma finding a way to add a flip -out screen to the BF’s UNBAD frame. Until then, there is a lot to ask for $ 2,000 a lot of camera that can be so high.
