Sigma CEO: Seriously looking at making Fujifilm fans happy
Cinema 5D posted an interview with Sigma's CEO Yamaki-San about the company's 60th anniversary. During the interview, the CEO confirmed again that they are seriously looking to make lenses for Fujifilm cameras (previously reported here). Here is the interview recap from FujiAddict:
- Sigma turns 60 in September
- Yamaki-San’s father founded the company at 27
- His father passed away a few years ago and Sigma has grown a lot since he passed, but Yamaki-San’s father would still want them to do more
- Yamaki-San isn’t sure if he is as ambitious about growing the company as his father was but he is more into quality
- Things always have positives and negatives including the pandemic
- The pandemic has reduced Sigma’s activity in terms of marketing sales, development, etc…
- The pandemic has been good for Sigma because they couldn’t have events so they had to come up with other ways to communicate with customers directly
- Sigma now has more ways to directly communicate with customers than they ever had before
- Sigma introduced a new fpl camera a few months ago which is not easy for a comparatively small camera company with limited resources so they had to design based on the priorities of the customers
- Sigma is in the middle of the process of finding its nitch for customers
- The fpl was designed for flexibility as a new camera
- Sigma is figuring out what to do next with its fp line
- Sigma acknowledges that there is some confusion about the fp and fpl among customers
- More and more people are interested in photography and even film
- Sigma’s production capacity is the same, but they added a new building to increase the precision of their assembly and quality control
- Sigma’ also added a new logistic center for shipping and customer support/repair because customer support is very important
- Sigma is always trying to make their lenses as small as possible, but they cant develop a pancake lens with acceptable quality yet
- Pancake lenses require compromising quality
- Sigma has been getting a lot of requests to make anamorphic lenses and Yamaki-San is interested in developing one, but they do not currently have plans for one, but would like to explore making one
- It’s hard to make anamorphic because everyone wants “character” and it is hard to tell what the majority would want
- It’s easier to make it perfect than it is to figure out where the “character” line is drawn
- The still photo market also has a huge variety of desires
- Many anamorphic users are sophisticated buyers which makes it even harder
- Sigma is aware there is a demand for Fujifilm cameras and Sigma is now seriously thinking about how to satisfy Fujifilm customers
- Sigma believes that healthy competition helps everyone’s capabilities and is better for the industry and customers
- Sigma is still doing FOVEON research and video capabilities are within the scope of that research
- The full-frame FOVEON design they came up with wasn’t good enough to go to mass production so Sigma started from scratch
- Sigma’s first priority is to obtain the best still quality with FOVEON
- Sigma can make good video in terms of quality with FOVEON but the readout speed is challenging
- Sigma needs 3x faster readouts for FOVEON video
Sigma could start making mirrorless APS-C lenses for Fujifilm X-Mount
Via FujiAddict