GEAR SIGMA BF
SILVER MACHINE IS MINIMALISM ENOUGH?
With a carved aluminium shell and stripped-back controls, Sigma’s BF is beautiful but fails as a usable video machine
WORDS ADAM DUCKWORTH
I t’s pretty easy to fall in love all-function-and-sod-the-looks machine, and equally it doesn’t fall into the retro styling trap that so many others do. Instead, it’s a modern, brutally minimalist design featuring an understated unibody carved from a solid block of aluminium, which takes seven hours. with the appearance of a camera that goes against the norm. The Sigma BF is definitely not an It uses L-Mount lenses – perfect for Sigma’s latest Contemporary series of primes and, like these optics, it comes in silver or black. The BF has pressure-sensitive haptic buttons and a single control dial with no eyelets for camera straps. It might cost £1969/$2199 for the body only,
TOP OF THE GLASS You can use any
L-Mount lenses but it would be a crime against fashion not to use a silver Sigma prime
It has no viewfinder or card slot, a fixed screen, no way of attaching an EVF, just four buttons and one USB-C port. There’s no mechanical shutter or image stabilisation when shooting stills and battery life isn’t great. You can buy a far more capable camera for far less money. But that’s missing the point. It’s a thing of beauty to look at and can take lovely images.
but it’s designed to be a fresh and simple camera that is intuitive and a joy to use. For still photographers who want to feel special when they use their camera, it has its undeniable charms. Sadly, that does not translate to video use as the BF makes very little sense, rendering it a compromised choice for hybrid content creators.
STYLE FOR MILES The lightly textured front panel makes the BF easier to grip. Note the lack of strap eyelets
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PRO MOVIEMAKER
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