Helium Design Lab Crafts the Perfect Grip to Match the Sigma BF’s Beauty
Photographer Hugh Brownstone and his design partner and friend Ed Palisoc are back with another carefully designed camera grip. This time, the design duo is looking at Sigma’s latest creation, the “beautifully foolish” Sigma BF.
Brownstone says he was “mesmerized” by the new Sigma BF camera, which is machined from a single block of aluminum. Before he got his hands on one, Brownstone was already thinking about how to make a Helium grip for the camera.
Once Brownstone did get to try the BF for himself at Sigma’s Pop-Up Event in New York City, he came away agreeing with his wife, fellow photographer Claudia Brownstone.
“[Claudia] suggested that a better name for [the Sigma BF] would have been ‘WS,’ meaning ‘wabi-sabi,’ an aesthetic, according to Wikipedia, sometimes described as one of appreciating beauty that is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete in nature,” Brownstone explains.
Brownstone says he and Palisoc were “so smitten” with Sigma’s courage and “audacity” with the BF’s principles and design. While seeing the camera up close and speaking with Sigma’s CEO, Kazuto Yamaki, only reinforced Brownstone’s views of the camera, he and Palisoc began working on designing a grip from the BF as soon as the camera was announced.
Impressively, about a month after the camera was announced, they had already designed a grip for the Sigma BF, the Helium BF, or He BF.
The He BF is already ready to go, ready to join Helium Design Lab’s existing grips for the Leica Q3, Leica Q2, and Leica M11, but given that the Sigma BF is a niche, low-volume product, albeit a very special one, the financial situation surrounding making a precisely machined “Made in the USA” grip for the BF is complicated.
“We are too small, [and] the uncertainties around the demand for the camera itself, the demand for the grip, the demand for our grip, and buyer’s price sensitivity, for us to take a ‘build it and they will come approach,'” Brownstone explains. “So, if you’ve already ordered or you intend to order the BF, please let us know. If you want the best possible grip for it… please tell us this too. If there’s enough interest, and it’s economically feasible to do so, we’d love to make [the grip] for you.”
Like Helium Design Lab’s prior camera grips, the one Brownstone and Palisoc designed for the Sigma BF includes all the same features: a fully machined aluminum design, access to the battery (there’s no memory card to worry about with the Sigma BF), a secure slot for an Apple AirTag, Peak Design Capture Clip compatibility, an Arca-Swiss mount, and more. And like their other grips, the duo has ensured the He BF honors the meticulous design of the Sigma BF itself. It looks like it could have come out of Sigma’s engineering department.
So, photographers who are interested in the Sigma BF and want a fantastic grip to go with it should let Helium Design Lab know either in the comments on the YouTube video above or by contacting the company directly.
Image credits: Helium Design Lab
