Beautiful/FRUSTRATION
By Randy
Rated 3 out of 5
Date: 2026-08-14
I wanted a nice everyday carry camera to take on daily walks, to an occasional event like a local parade or a park, or even to take to restaurants here and there. I already own a Leica Q3, a Nikon ZF, a Sony A7CR, and more. I admit that, besides just loving photography, I have always loved various gadgets, especially different cameras. :)
I was drawn to the BF because, to me, it really does look and feel awesome in hand and is built like a tank. Felt like I JUST WANTED to use it vs the other mostly all look-alike cameras I have.
Anyway, my likes aside, I SO much wanted to love this Sigma BF. I shoot RAW + JPEG always. For an EDC camera, JPEGs are important, I feel, as unlike using a camera for a great vacation or a real photo shoot, etc I don't / didn't want to have to edit nearly every photo once I came back home from a casual walk as example, color mostly and even contrast.
I was GREATLY disappointed in the JPEGs on the BF, no matter how I tried to tweak each color profile. Greens have a strange yellow cast to them; auto WB and even metering never seemed very consistent at all, and something as simple as a YELLOW sunflower was so difficult to capture, be it in standard mode, forest green, well, any of their built-in profiles.
Raws? Looks FANTASTIC, but what a pain... again for an EDC camera, which was MY purpose. The screen, as many have mentioned, is horribly dim in most outdoor light. Obviously, I read reviews first but thought I'd be ok with it. Picture an $89 Samsung phone...where you can't really see the screen outside... well, that's the BF's screen.
Indoors, the screen is beautiful, detailed, with what seems like very accurate color... but outdoors you PRAY. Autofocus is excellent, as is eye detection, a big positive.
Another nutty quirk was for auto ISO, at least in aperture priority mode. BF LETS you choose a range...for example, ISO 100-12,500, whatever. The thing is, even if you are set to Auto iso the iso will NEVER drop below iso 400.
WHY then let you set the parameters!! Battery life is overall abysmal, but I turned the camera off after nearly every shot, so that wasn't an issue for me. The interface, oddly enough, becomes VERY intuitive. I just wish you could control more or program a few shortcuts. Feel? I actually liked how it felt in hand. I dunno about all these people saying it's sharp or you can drop it easily. I did put it in a camera bag often, but carrying it even 10-15 minutes or more at a time in hand seemed overall just fine to me.
I did LOVE, LOVE the built-in hard drive VS needing an SD card. It was somehow very freeing; just grab the camera and go. I used a small USB SSK flash that had a USB-C on one end. Transferring photos to the flash drive took seconds; LOVED that feature.
In the end, at least for me, this thing is just WAY too expensive vs so many other cameras that can certainly have the same or better image quality and likely much better JPEGs if you aren't into editing almost every picture to get more natural colors, no matter which color profile you choose.
I paired the BF with Sigma's 35mm Silver Contemporary lens, and the lens is fantastic. The camera to ME, looked and felt amazing- Leica-like, but quirk after quirk after so many compromises, and the DIM screen? Well, for me, this camera was so FRUSTRATING to use and enjoy overall. If you like really quirky cameras, this is IT...It truly is beautiful but FRUSTRATING and overpriced! - IMO