Sigma’s Big Day: 16-300mm, 300-600mm Super Tele Zooms and an Unusual Compact Camera
posted Monday, February 24, 2025 at 7:14 AM EDT
In the runup to the CP+ 2025 show, Sigma Corporation hosted a press event at their (spectacular) headquarters building in Kanagawa. It was a big day for them, with significant lens announcements for both APS-C and full-frame formats and a stunning new L-mount camera body hewn from a solid block of aluminum. It also marked a recommitment to Sigma’s core values and strengths, as Sigma’s CEO Kazuto Yamaki described it “excelling at the art of engineering, engineering for art”
With his usual candor, Yamaki-san spoke of his struggle to define the future for Sigma in a world where smartphones have taken over more and more of people’s photography. Will there even be a place for dedicated cameras going forward? It was a question that weighed heavily on him personally. What could Sigma do to contribute to the industry, or what could they do for photography itself in order to survive all the changes.
He found the answer in something his father (the founder of Sigma) had told him long ago, that technological innovation is an art in itself. “This reminded me what we can do for photography. We can contribute to the art of visual expression by refining our technology to the level of an art form, and supplying the very best products to photographers and image makers.” Sigma’s role isn’t to just make the same things as everyone else, it’s to make “the best of the best”. By doing that, they’ll find the support they need from the photo community.
To call attention to their recommitment to “technology, craftsmanship and art”, Yamaki-san announced a change in their branding from the previous black, red and white to a new theme featuring earth tones and a new wordmark and symbol, the latter a simple design based on the Greek letter sigma. Their tagline is “The art of engineering. Engineering for art.”
Each of the products announced today are ground-breaking, albeit in different ways.
The Sigma 16-300mm f/3.5-6.7 DC OS Contemporary Lens
Truly an all-in-one lens, the new 16-300mm is the first 18.8x zoom for APS-C cameras. It not only spans the range from ultrawide to super-tele, but it can shoot macros at up to a 1:2 magnification ratio (at a 70mm focal length).
I was surprised by how compact and lightweight it is; it’s just under 74mm in diameter by 121.4mm long and weighs in at only 615 g or 21.7 ounces. With 6 stops of compensation at the wide and and 4.5 stops at tele, it’s IS is top-notch as well. Finally, Sigma’s HLA (High-response Linear Actuator) focus motor promises fast AF tracking for active subjects.
The new 16-300mm will go on sale in April for $599, and significantly will be available for Canon RF mount(!) as well as L-Mount, Sony E-mount and Fuji X Mount.
The Sigma 300-600mm f/4 DG OS Sports Lens
The new 300-600mm f/4 supertele zoom is a beast. While they tout it as handholdable (thanks in part to its 5.5 stops of image stabilization), most photographers will likely want to use it with at least a monopod.
The crowd literally gasped and applauded when this lens came up on the screen, the world’s first zoom lens with a maximum aperture of f/4 at 600mm.
As you’d expect, it’s a beast, coming in at almost 4kg, and 167 x 467.9mm. Speaking with one of the lens’ designers, he said that keeping it to that size was a primary goal in part so it would fit within airline carry-on dimensions. While Yamaki-san billed it as light enough for handheld use, I expect almost anyone shooting with it would at least use a monopod. Fixed focal length 600mm f/4s from the likes of Canon, Nikon and Sony weigh in at 3,090, 3,260 and 3,040 grams respectively, so having the zoom capability does add some weight. On the other hand, when you have a 600mm on your camera and the subject needs a 300mm to fit into the frame, you’d probably be happy to lug the added mass. What’s the cost of a missed shot?
The new lens has 28 elements in 21 groups, including six FLD and one SLD element, delivering optical quality that Yamaki-san said would be very close to that of the 600mm primes it competes with. To help keep your subject in the frame and blur-free, the lens’ IS system is rated at 5.5 stops, with a switch to change modes for panning vs static shots. AF tracking should be speedy too, with Sigma’s HLA focus actuators mentioned above. It’s an internal-focus design, minimizing balance shifts during focusing and supports internal filters
The price is where things get interesting and where Canon, Nikon and Sony may lose some sleep: The Sigma 300-600 f/4 will ship in April of this year for L-Mount and Sony E Mount, for just $5,999. Given that the camera makers’ 600mm f/4 primes sell for $13,000 - $14,000, this new supertele zoom will surely cost them some sales, while opening up the world of wide-aperture superteles to many who could only dream of it previously..
The Sigma BF Camera
The third and in some ways most significant announcement was the BF L-Mount camera, a gorgeous, minimalist design embodying what Yamaki-san called “radical simplicity”.
The BF is the answer that Yamaki touched on at the beginning of his presentation: Is there a role for a dedicated “everyday” camera? He of course believes the answer is yes, but he noted how complex modern cameras are compared to the simplicity of using your smartphone.
He laid responsibility for this on a user interface brought forward from the film world, making them unsuitable for frequent “everyday” use. Instead, he pointed to the very foundations of photography, with the original camera obscura being nothing more than a dark box.
In designing an “everyday system camera”, he and his engineers wanted to strip away all visual distractions and provide a user interface that’s simple and intuitive. This led to three main design elements: Unibody construction, a single-finger user interface and what he called dual-layer menus.
The unibody construction eliminates visible screws and provides a very solid, high-quality feel in the hand. The entire camera body is machined from a single block of aluminum on a 5-axis machining center. It takes 7 hours of continuous machining to create each body. (I’m amazed that they can afford this, it’ll take a huge number of advanced, very expensive machining centers to crank out production volumes of these.)
“Radical simplicity” definitely describes the look; the top has only a shutter button and two tiny mic holes, the right side has just a lug for the handstrap, the left side just the USB port (10 Gbps USB-C), and the bottom only the tripod socket and battery compartment. The back has the LCD, a small readout, a rotary dial with 4-way control and a central pushbutton and three other buttons.
Interestingly, the camera has no media slot: It has 320 GB of built-in memory, claimed to be enough for up to 14,000 JPEGs, 4,300 DNG RAW files or 2.5 hours of maximum-bitrate video.
The user interface is indeed very simple and straightforward. The main shooting menu is split into two rows, at the top and bottom of the screen. The menu itself only appears when you press the controller button; the display is completely free of distracting elements while shooting, and you see one of two current settings in the small window at the top of the rear panel. The displayed settings are paired according to their position on the split menu; pressing up or down on the multi-way controller switches to the corresponding setting from the other half of the menu, while pressing right or left steps over to the adjacent pairs of items.
Yamaki-san said that the UI might take a little getting used to for people accustomed to more conventional setups, but that once you’ve used it a little it becomes very fast and fluid.
In terms of specs, the BF has a 24 megapixel full-frame sensor, with hybrid phase and contrast autofocus. While primarily meant as a stills camera, the BF can shoot 6K, 4K or full HD video at 24/25/30 fps for the two higher resolutions and up to 120 fps for the lower one, with an option for L-log recording. It will come in black or natural aluminum, and with its introduction, Sigma will also be offering aluminum-colored versions of its i-series lenses.
As with the other products, the BF will be available in April, at a price of $1,999.
The Sigma Foundation
He also announced the creation of the Sigma Foundation, to support and collaborate with photographers from around the world. Appearing on Sigma’s site under Art Projects [https://www.sigma-global.com/en/art-projects/], the first two featured artists take photography in very different directions, moody images of a boy’s journey to find the “innermost spirit of art” from Julia Hetta, and strange, otherworldly “flower” images created by photographer Sølve Sundsbø using his own photographs as input to an AI image generator.