Sigma CEO: we will make smaller lenses, but bigger cameras

Over at Saloon De La Photo in Paris, Sigma held a quick Q&A session with Mr. Kazuto Yamaki, CEO of Sigma. There is a wonky angle capture of this talk, if you want to see the entire thing (starts about  40 minutes into the video). It is a long session, with many interesting questions, but photographer Paul Monaghan took a few key notes from this session and allowed us to share them.

The first take is that the new up-coming full-frame Foveon will not be in the FP format:

The new Sigma Foveon camera will be bigger than the fp, mostly as it requires a more powerful processor to work which wouldn’t yet fit in the fp size.

I welcome this because some of my best Sigma lenses are rather large like the 105 f1.4 ART so they would balance better and give room to place a mechanical shutter and other features but I do hope they can also make a Foveon version of the fp at some point as it would be a great travel setup, the dp Merrills are still some of the best IQ for size cameras around all these years later.

Mr. Yamaki also said that they will produce a line of lenses that are smaller in size to go with the FP smaller form factor:

There are two range of lens being made for the L mount cameras, the normal photographic range that will be larger and focus more on IQ like the ART range but they are also working on a second smaller range like the 45mm f2.8 Contemporary which is great news and I feel there’s room for both as people have different needs.

Right around the 1:09 mark Mr. Yamakisays something that for me is incredible. he turns his focus from the commitment of Sigma to the market to its commitment to its employees. Which, in turn, forces the company to create innovative products which will secure Sigma’s share in the high-end market:

maybe you know that we make all the products in Japan to protect our employees’ jobs. Because Sigma is a family company. So first priority is to protect the employees’ job. But the challenge is that product cost in Japan is very high. So unless we go to the higher quality product, we can not survive.

[via Paul Monaghan]