The Sigma BF Stands for ‘Beautiful Foolishness’
Speaking to PetaPixel after the launch of a new camera and two new lenses, Sigma’s CEO Kazuto Yamaki shared the origins of the new camera’s name: “beautiful foolishness.”
The new camera bucks multiple trends that have guided camera design since the days of film photography. The compact 24.6-megapixel full-frame interchangeable lens camera is controlled by a wholly re-imagined user interface and just three buttons, a dial, and a shutter release. The company says it is the first in the world to make a camera with a true unibody design that is carved from a single block of aluminum — a process that takes seven hours.
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 — it instead comes with built-in memory that is accessed via USB-C.
All of those are bold, polarizing choices, but the camera’s name seems to indicate how Yamaki and Sigma as a whole view the new camera and hope others will see it.
“BF stands for beautiful foolishness,” Yamaki says. “This is a phrase taken from the book, the very old book — I think probably over a hundred years old — called The Book of Tea by Okakura Tenshin, the Japanese researcher. At that time, he wanted to tell the spirit of the Japanese culture and we have the tea ceremony. And through the tea ceremony, he tried to tell what is the essence of Japanese culture.
“In the book he said, let’s enjoy the time and the beautiful foolishness with a cup of tea. So this camera is for daily use. Daily life is full of joy and nice relaxing time which he calls it the beautiful foolishness.”
Yamaki designed the camera with the intention of making it as easy as possible to use without feeling constrained to older design elements that are, Sigma argues, not necessary and overly complicated.
“I hope this camera will have a kind of timeless value,” he adds.
The Sigma BF is coming in April and will be available in either black or silver for $1,999.
