Speaking to PetaPixel after the launch of a new camera and two new lenses, Sigma’s CEO Kazuto Yamaki shared the origins of the new camera’s name: “beautiful foolishness.”

The new camera bucks multiple trends that have guided camera design since the days of film photography. The compact 24.6-megapixel full-frame interchangeable lens camera is controlled by a wholly re-imagined user interface and just three buttons, a dial, and a shutter release. The company says it is the first in the world to make a camera with a true unibody design that is carved from a single block of aluminum — a process that takes seven hours.

Jaron Schneider, “The Sigma BF Stands for ‘Beautiful Foolishness’”, PetaPixel, 20250223.

I’m not on the market for a new camera, but if I were, I would definitely consider the Sigma BF. Hold on, I’m lying. I’m always on the market for a new camera, which is why I should definitely not consider the Sigma BF.

I love Sigma almost as much as Pentax — the DP2 was an absolute nightmare, it wasn’t so much a camera as an exercise in patience and perseverance, but it produced some of the most beautiful pictures I’ve ever taken. Sigma is everything a company should be: audacious, single-minded, hopeful, tenacious, and above all, absolutely committed to the bit. They’re seriously unserious, which is the best kind of serious.

In this age of conspicuous consumption and algorithmic sameness, weird is good. ‘The BF isn’t going to be for everyone’, says Schneider, ‘but what it represents is something that should at the very least be respected’. That something is a desire to ‘express their appreciation to the rest of humanity, to make something wonderful and put it out there’, as Steve Jobs so eloquently put it. The BF might be weird, but at least, it makes you feel something. It makes you feel human.

Microsoft says it created a new state of matter and observed a particular kind of particle, both for the first time. In a twelve-minute video, the company defines this new era — called the “quantum age” — as a literal successor to the Stone Age and the Bronze Age. Jeez.

There is hype, and then there is hype. This is the latter. Even if it is backed by facts — I have no reason to suspect Microsoft is lying in large part because, to reiterate, I do not know anything about this — and even if Microsoft deserves this much attention, it is a lot. Maybe I have become jaded by one too many ostensibly world-changing product launches.

Nick Heer, ‘I Do Not Understand Quantum Computers or the Apparent Breakthroughs From Google and Microsoft’, Pixel Envy, 20250221.

It’s hard to get your head around quantum computing, but I know just enough about it to be able to say that Microsoft’s announcement is deliberately obscure. Their video is baffling — it feels unrehearsed and inconsequential, as if they knew their claims were a little too good to be true, but they had to rush out before someone else would steal their thunder.

Microsoft is, tragically, everything companies actually are: soulless, ambiguous, cheerless, sketchy, and above all, absolutely ready to jump ship at the first occasion. They’re seriously serious, which is the worst kind of serious. I want to believe they’ll be able to build topological qubits out of their incredibly exotic semiconductor-superconductor structures, but at this point, nothing in their claims holds up to the tiniest amount of scrutiny.

Beating around the bush, not to say lying, is the best way to express your contempt for the rest of humanity. I’m sure they’re really proud of themselves, but they’re a little bit too eager to ask us to be proud of them too. We need less Microsofts, less reasons to frown in complete bewilderment, and more Sigmas, more reasons to smile in absolute delight.