Seven Hours of Milling Per Camera. Sigma Calls the Result Radically Simple.

Core77 covered the Sigma BF this month, a full-frame mirrorless camera that the Japanese optics company describes as "radically simple." Each body is machined from a single block of aluminum. Sigma puts the milling time at seven hours per camera.

That number is the story. Seven hours of cutting buys a body with no seams and no assembled shell, and most of what it bought was removal. The SD card slot is gone, replaced by 230GB of internal memory and a USB-C port for getting files out. The controls and menus are pared back. Sigma's framing, quoted by Core77: "By simplifying and stripping away all excess elements, this full-frame mirrorless camera redefines the process of taking a photograph as a natural act." The company says it was aiming at the camera obscura, the plain dark box that photography started as. Iwasaki Design Studio did the industrial design. It sells for $2,200 in silver or black.

Adding a button is cheap. Any factory can do it in an afternoon and the spec sheet gets longer for free. Removing one costs a redesign, and removing the SD card slot cost Sigma a supply chain decision plus 230GB of onboard memory to cover for it. Restraint showed up on the invoice, and Sigma paid it anyway.

This is the shift from maximum functionality to maximum well-being arriving on a factory floor, where the proof stops being a feature list and starts being machine hours. Maybe that is where the argument was always going to be settled. What happens when the hours become the pitch, and every company starts advertising what it took the trouble to leave out?