Sigma BF review

What is the Sigma BF and who is it for?

If you live in a carefully curated house with a smattering of sculptural furniture, your wardrobe is 50 shades of black and you drive a Polestar to your job as an architect, Sigma has just the camera for you.

This is the new BF, featuring a body carved from a solid block of aluminium, which takes seven hours. It uses L-Mount lenses – perfect for Sigma’s latest Contemporary series of primes. Like these optics, it comes in either 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 for the body only, but it’s designed to be a fresh, simple camera that’s intuitive and a joy to use.

But for many, the BF makes very little sense. It has no viewfinder or card slot, a fixed screen, just four buttons and one USB-C port. There’s no image stabilisation or mechanical shutter, and the battery life isn’t great. You can buy a far more capable camera – but that would be missing the point entirely.

What are the key features of the Sigma BF?

Sensor and image quality

Sigma might have built a camera for the sort of people who iron their socks, but it hasn’t skimped on the important bits, such as image quality. Inside it is a 24.6-megapixel BSI full-frame CMOS sensor, and phase detection AF with subject detection modes that work well. Images are recorded to 230GB of internal memory.

Connectivity and data transfer

You transfer images via the USB-C port, which offers fast data transfer and charging.

Controls

With few controls, the user interface is vital and also has a refined look. The main shooting settings are displayed on the live view screen, with secondary settings in the optional menu and more detailed settings in the system menu. The default live view screen shows basic info such as shutter speed, ISO, exposure compensation, aperture and colour mode, but all that can be hidden for a clean view of the subject.

It sounds great, but the buttons and menu system take some getting used to. Style over real-world speed and usability? Definitely. But you expect this from an anti-retro camera that seems built to frustrate spec-hunters.

Colour profiles and creative modes

With the colour mode so prominent on the home screen, Sigma obviously thinks users will often be switching between the 13 different looks, which are:

• Standard
• Rich
• Calm
• Powder Blue
• Warm Gold
• Teal and Orange
• FOV Classic Blue
• FOV Classic Yellow
• Forest Green
• Sunset Red
• Cinema
• 709 Look
• Monochrome

These do give some decent straight-out-of-camera looks. However, if you prefer shooting Raw and processing post-capture, you can.

And what stunning pictures you’ll get. The images are sharp and detailed with low noise, wonderful colours and lots of headroom to play with in the edit suite. The camera produces simply glorious files – both in stills and video.

Video

Yes, the BF supports 6K video in up to 30fps and goes up to 120fps in HD, with up to an hour of recording on one charge. L-Log support maximises dynamic range. The camera has a built-in mic for scratch audio, but no input for an external mic or headphones for monitoring. With no articulating screen, using the BF for video is a pain. You can use USB-C headphones or a mic, but not both at the same time.

Conclusion

But understand what this camera is for and why, stick to stills and you may have found an image-making machine that delights your soul and brings you visual pleasure in all ways. 

Sigma BF price and availability

The Sigma BF is available to buy, with a starting price of £1969.

For more information, visit the Sigma website.