Sigma Says the Compact, Modular FP2 Is the Ultimate Hybrid Camera | Hacker News Reader

Sigma Says the Compact, Modular FP2 Is the Ultimate Hybrid Camera

petapixel.com

58 pointsthm88 comments

I looked into buying a compact full-frame camera a couple years ago (the Sony a7c2), and came to the conclusion that the size and weight of lenses matters more than the camera body. So personally I don’t really see the point of making a camera body this small if you have to sacrifice on things like IBIS, an EVF, physical controls, and heat dissipation/recording limits.

Are there any particular use cases where a camera this small really offers a significant benefit? Perhaps street photography when paired with certain compact lenses? Or mounted on a gimbal?

Or maybe the L mount and compact size would make this an appealing secondary camera for people who already own L mount lenses for Panasonic or Leica (as well as some DJI and Blackmagic) cameras?

There's a saying "buy the glass, rent the camera" as camera bodies change much more frequently than lenses. There's more camera mounts now than when I first heard the saying though.

The saying is a little outdated, or at least it needs more nuance rather than being a hard rule.

Nowadays lenses are improving in image quality significantly, particularly in the suppression of chromatic aberrations, and sharpness across the frame in zooms and wide angle lenses. Cheap mirrorless lenses put legendary L glass to shame nowadays. A bunch of Chinese manufacturers have autofocus lenses with amazing image quality. However, the bodies are sort of plateauing with 24 MP sensors still being popular for many years.

Video specs and autofocus have been the major improvements in camera bodies lately. I upgraded to an A7Cii and was impressed that the AF will perfectly lock on to fursuit eyes, while my A7iii would focus on the tip of the nose.

> will perfectly lock on to fursuit eyes

how's the pay shooting the furry community these days?

I do it for free for fun but I see people doing it professionally for around $100-$1000 for a photo shoot, but to get paid that much you need to have some serious creative vision, marketing, a bunch of gear, and spend the day at some scenic location with lighting gear etc.

I've also been looking to hire a videographer to record DJs/the crowd at furry club events but I don't know the market rate for that just yet.

I think you've mixed that one up, its usually something like "date the body, marry the glass", implying you'll buy and sell many camera bodies over time but keep good lenses. For non professional work you'd want to own both the body and lens, going to the rental shop every time you go on holiday or to a birthday party would be a pain.

For professional work you rent both the lens and the body so you can use the highest end gear specialized for the one particular job and aren't left hanging on to a $10k lens you use once a year.

> "date the body, marry the glass"

how is that different? They both mean that you won't be keeping the camera while holding onto the lenses. Also, at the time of the saying, it was for professional film shoots and not your take on vacay. Yes, it's an old saying, but rang true for a long time. Similar to Moore's law. Neither are as relevant while still being a bit truthy.

You don't rent the camera body any more than you rent the lens. If you are a hobbiest or doing a job that doesn't require a huge range of gear you should own both.

The saying is more that camera bodies get updated far more often than glass so you should care more about having great glass and swap out the camera bodies as needed. But owning lenses but no camera body would be absurd.

Again, isn't dating and renting equivalent?

Regardless, it is outdated when very few owned film cameras. If you had a chance to buy a set of Cooke lenses for a steal even though you didn't own a camera, you absolutely would if you were able. You could then rent a Red, Arri, or even film cameras as needed. You're forcing this into a modern digital only situation where camera bodies are dirt cheap maybe from being younger so that's your familiarity??

6k 60p video in this form factor is extremely solid, though there's no IBIS.

In the PetaPixel review they found that the camera overheated after 33 minutes when recording 4k60p. So 6k60p would be probably overheat even faster than that. Maybe not an issue depending on what you're trying to shoot, but seems like the sort of thing that could be frustrating or even completely ruin your day.

I combine the a7cII with various small primes (Sony 24mm f2.8, Sony 40mm f2.5, Sigma 90mm f2.8, Voigtlander 35mm f1.4) and I have a very capable camera that fits in a tiny bag. It's great for street and travel.

Then when I need to I can attach the same body to a big lens (Tamron 28-200, Sigma 100-400) and slap on a Smallrig grip to counteract the lens weight. It's great for protests and birding.

IMO the benefit is that one can purchase a single body and do big camera and small camera things with it.

The a7cII has a built-in EVF and IBIS, though, and it’s priced similarly to the FP2. Autofocus on the a7cII is probably better, too. I can definitely see the appeal of the a7cII even though in the end I decided to go with a camera system with smaller, less expensive lenses.

Whereas the FP2 seems to compromise more on useful features in the name of compactness.

With regards to the size and weight of lenses, Sigma also announced the most compact autofocus 50mm f/1.4 lens ever along with the FP-2, which is even smaller than their 50mm f/2 lens. It's really nice when you can just toss a full frame camera with a 50mm f/1.4 into your pocket. Of course, the autofocus is slower and there is no IBIS or EVF. But when it comes to the pareto frontier of small size versus full frame image quality, this is it.

Ok that lens does look pretty awesome [1].

And it looks like there are some interesting ultra compact (and affordable) autofocus lenses from Chinese makers available now compared to when I last looked.

Having more compact full frame lenses on offer is an exciting development IMO. Although none of them are stabilized, which makes the lack of IBIS on the FP2 a bit more painful.

[1] https://www.sigma-global.com/en/news/2026/10/23/012375/

> Sigma developed a powerful autofocus actuator in which coils and magnets, as used in the HLA (High-response Linear Actuator), are arranged in a circle to match the shape of the lens barrel

"We had the genius idea of taking a linear actuator and wrapping it into a circle... let's call it a 'normal motor'!"

Yeah I'm really excited to try this lens - sounds like it'll be optically similar to some film-era 1.4 lenses and they have lots of character. I have a Minolta 50mm f/1.4 I use all the time because it just has a look that I can't get from modern perfect glass.

Those lenses are smaller at the cost of image quality. In photography you can't have a cake and eat it too.

The Fp L was great for landscapes because it was so ridiculously tiny for a 61MP camera that you could just chuck it in a waist bag instead of a backpack.

For the lower-resolution versions, they're very popular with video people from my understanding. The Fp was in particular popular with directors for test shots and framing, and they've leaned into that use-case with this new one I believe.

I came to basically the same conclusion when I purchased some years back. It seemed to me then that even in the ostensibly smaller mount formats, all the manufacturers were chasing larger bodies and lenses, and reserving all the upscale features in those. I think trends have recently convinced manufacturers that compact bodies are "cool", but I'm still waiting for more compact lens options. I ended up just making due with a large body and carefully managing how I travel with lenses.

I had some interest in the first Sigma FP, but my impression is that it was getting used mostly in highly modular video setups, not so much to save space.

I love my a7c + kit lens + 50mm prime. Its a great compact travel setup And a nice upgrade over my a6000.

Sigma are far and away my favourite photographic company right now, for a variety of reasons, but top of the list has to be that they're doing something different. What they're doing might not be for you but at least they're not just making another camera the same shape as every DSLR/mirrorless camera going back 25 years.

From a personal perspective, they were the only company that was interested in loaning me gear to review from right at the start of me making YouTube videos. Many other companies continue to refuse to talk with me even when I've found serious bugs.

The frustrating part is that they're currently not releasing full-frame lenses on Nikon's Z mount, likely due to a licensing issue with Nikon. And that's frustrating because for my needs, there's no "pro" level camera on L mount that I can use, and Sony hobble third party lens manufacturers' maximum burst speeds (also I don't like Sony's AF but that's another story). I ended up selling a lot of my L mount gear and consolidating on Nikon for professional work.

But I did buy myself a Sigma Bf. The Fp series is excellent but the Bf is beautiful. It's such a fundamentally weird camera that it reminds me of camera design back in the 60s-90s where companies went absolutely nuts with camera ideas. Is it my most practical camera? Very much not. Is it the camera I use to take pictures of my cat? Absolutely.

I'm always excited to see what Sigma comes out with. Their optics and manufacturing have moved on dramatically since Yamaki-san took over in 2012, and they're constantly bringing out really interesting new optics. I'm very excited to try out that new 50mm f/1.4 CL they announced, personally.

I highly recommend watching videos on the ProcessX YouTube channel that shows their factory and processes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qx14Juo4AQo.

How do people who are far sighted use cameras without EVF ? When I have to hold a camera 20 cm in front of me to film I just pretend I'm able to focus on the LCD.

I think many viewfinders have a mechanism that can adjust the magnification of the viewfinder regardless of whether it’s electronic or not because it’s an optical adjustment. Old film SLRs even have this.

I have used contact lenses in the past (though I didn't really like them for everyday use so I just wear glasses now) and/or a camera an optical viewfinder with diopter adjustment, which is sufficient for my long sightedness, but I'm lucky in that the eye I tend to use on the viewfinder is the "better" one as well.

You used to be able to get aftermarket eye pieces to attach the the camera as well which either put more distance between the back of the camera and your head in order to make room for glasses, or (more rarely) had or could accept additional correction lenses.

I'm not sure if those are a thing still for the newest cameras though - the move towards EVFs make it even more of a niche item.

Cautiously optimistic for them. Sigma faces some steep competition against Canon/Sony/Nikon but might be able to find a niche like Fuji has with price on one hand and lens+color fans on the other.

No IBIS is rough, because its definitely a useful thing - the R6 III has 8.5 stops for $2.7k, same price as the FP2 with an EVF. At $2.2k, the partial stacked sensor might reduce the jello effect, might not. It's an interesting tradeoff and it'll come down to whether the AF is good enough to make the 20 fps it shoots at usable. For example, if you shoot 30 fps but the AF doesn't work, 28/30 shots being blurry is a waste. The flagship cameras can get 60-90% keep rates if you do your part, so I'm curious what Sigma's system can pull off outside of a studio.

I think the biggest problem with a minimalist ILC is that a commodity body stops making sense bc once you throw in even a few decent lenses and the usual other spend on memory and lights, you're outside of the budget range. You don't _have_ to have Art lenses and nice gear - one of my favorite fun lenses is a $150 lensbaby experiment, but the gap between a decently rounded Canon kit and a Sigma kit closes in price and widens in capability fast once you get started, at least gear-wise.

I'm surprised there aren't Android Cameras? At a reasonable-ish price?

Like a Pixel 6a is $249 new right now.

So, where's that same caliber of hardware, but as a camera-first?

Same. Mobile phones have excellent image processing, displays, and interfaces, but small optics and sensors. Dedicated cameras have big optics and sensors, but bad/limited image processing, displays, and interfaces.

Most of the 'image processing' on phones involve AI processing to make all pictures look 'nice' but same-ish, which is not really what the market wants from dedicated high-end camera with big optics and sensors.

But a very small sensor paired with a good telephoto lens is an interesting option. You can get away with much less glass for the same zoom but the downsides of a small sensor. So you get something like the Nikon Coolpix P1100 which has 2000mm full-frame equivalent magnification, but only 16MP and terrible low light performance.

The market is just not demanding it. People buying these full frame cameras opt to shoot in raw and have a desktop program with significantly more compute and control after the fact do the processing.

Whatever denoising algorithm they put on the camera, your laptop will do it better. Stripping back the processing means you can take photos at 60fps with minimal battery drain.

This is it for me. I don't want phone technology or operating systems anywhere near my cameras - I need them to be reliable and predictable.

Samsung made one

https://www.classiccameradatabase.com/blog/the-mirrorless-ca...

And exactly _one_. In 2013. I had it.

This camera was great. I could take pictures and upload them directly to Picassa without screwing around with SD cards. The camera UI was also a step up from the regular morass of menus, all alike.

It’s just another point of planed obsolescence. Your Android camera with direct to Facebook upload will stop getting updated in a few years and be useless junk. Meanwhile 2008 digital cameras work just as well as they did back then.

Handheld cameras aren’t meant to be interacted with a lot. The interface is supposed to get out of the way and get photos to the SD card as fast and predictably as possible.

Sony camera firmware is Android based, but without the Android UI.

Some of the camera makers have added apps and app stores and they haven’t been popular.

Most users don’t want their dedicated camera to be a full Android phone. The specs of the CPU don’t matter as long as it shoots fast enough and does what you need when you press the button.

The touchscreens are a common point of complaint as they are. Many photographers want physical controls and a viewfinder. The screen is only there to review photos quickly.

I also want to upload to Google Photos automatically. And have the ability to share to Facebook Messenger, post to Facebook Wall, live stream to Instagram or Youtube or whatever... It adds up, pretty quickly.

It sounds like you want the photos to be accessible from your actual phone, which is something that most of these already support. Some of the apps will even automatically upload to cloud services for you.

Most of the use cases you describe like sending FB messages or live streaming on Instagram do not warrant a $3000 camera body attached to a $3000 lens. They’re perfectly served already by actual phones and their built-in cameras.

The people buying these professional units don’t buy them to send straight to FB messenger.

I'm not looking for a $3000 camera that I can install Roblox on.

I'm looking for a $300-$500 camera that has a better-than-cellphone sensors, and better-than-cellphone optics, and as an actual Android device can trivially talk to the apps I share photos and videos on.

I’ve been trying to tell you: The common handheld cameras already have integrations to get the photos from the camera into your phone so you can do these things.

Your dream of a $300 camera that is also an Android phone that handles your apps and has large image sensors and optics is not going to happen, sorry. You’re describing a cell phone. Adding all of the things that make larger cameras valuable upgrades over a cell phone camera would not bring you back to the price of the cell phone itself.

> Handheld cameras aren’t meant to be interacted with a lot. The interface is supposed to get out of the way and get photos to the SD card as fast and predictably as possible.

Yeah, sure. If you want a great shot in low-light conditions, you often need to tweak the color balance and exposure.

My usual test is taking a picture of the full moon. Most cameras on automatic settings result in a white blob.

I also frequently want to review a couple of previous photos to see if I messed up anything.

> Some of the camera makers have added apps and app stores and they haven’t been popular.

Camera app stores were never popular because the SDKs for cameras were obscure and buggy.

> Yeah, sure. If you want a great shot in low-light conditions, you often need to tweak the color balance and exposure.

Exactly. That's the type of interaction they need to support, not all of the Facebook Messenger and other app interactions the parent commenter is looking for.

Those functions are also the ones most frequently requested to appear on physical controls.

Technically all the Sony cameras run on Android. Older models (e.g. the a7 II) allow you to install specially built "PlayMemories" Android apps.

Nowadays Android is mostly a hidden implementation detail, but I did recently see someone Claude+ADB some neat stuff for their Sony camera.

I’m really keen for the future of modded firmwares on cameras. One feature I’d love to have is starting an SMB or ftp server on the camera so I can just copy files over the network rather than having to move sd cards or plug anything in.

So Android is finally back to its root, a camera firmware.

>I'm surprised there aren't Android Cameras? At a reasonable-ish price?

https://th.hkyongnuo.com/products/yn455

There are none because it's a stupid idea. The last thing I need in a digital camera is apps, ads and google uploading my every snap to cloud for analysis. Cameras also need to be fast and reliable which is not something that describes Android well.

There have been a few attempts at Android cameras going way back to the Galaxy Camera of 2012

https://web.archive.org/web/20120831232318/http://geeknizer....

But they just didn't have the ergonomics or battery life to act as a replacement for small SLRs.

24mp on full frame just isn’t enough. The resolving power of good glass is just significantly better than the pixel size, and when you can find 40 and 60+ mp options and get significantly more flexibility for significant cropping and still be of high enough resolution for prints. I do not understand why anyone is buying these low megapixel cameras in full frame in 2026.

I like this concept of a minimal core camera which has a huge sensor, the logic board, a battery compartment, and then mounting points for accessories to customize it to the use case.

Lack of in body image stabilization is difficult, though. It makes sense for a minimum size camera but IBIS is amazing when it’s working well.

Ever looked into digital backs? Basically what you are describing. Sometimes minus battery - the (old) mega vision backs are just a sensor, FPGA, and firewire cable out to a host!

I would imagine you'd need at least FP16, if not a full FP32, to get the ultimate camera.

Ah yes, the four genders: 0, 1, Inf, and NaN.

Sigma is the last great experimenter in the industry and I appreciate everything they do however wacky (former fp, fpL and various i-series lens owner)

Cool looking camera, but OMG this website is HORRID. Brings my entire computer to a crawl, barely can scroll the article at all.

Are you browsing the web without an ad blocker?

You mean on a corporate managed device? Why yes, yes I am.

Seems like your corp is mismanaging your device. Ad-blockers are one of the most important security improvements you can make to a modern web browser.

Sigma's own website, on the other hand, is beautiful: https://www.sigmaphoto.com/fp2

I'm done w/ hybrid cameras. Just make a video focused camera or a photography focused camera. Didn't people learn their lesson after seeing how well FX3 did?

Pointless having a camera so small if you need a tripod everywhere because it has no image stabilization.

IBIS is nice but you do not need a tripod if you don't have it

This depends entirely on what you’re shooting and the available light.

I have a very nice tripod that has been in the closet for a decade because I do not have a use for it with what I shoot.

People used to shoot 100iso film without tripods or IBIS… (and still do)

Sunny sixteen!

$2.2k retail and 20 fps AF could work with the right lens and light, if the AF pans out to be at least partly as good as Canon & Sony.

Sigma's entire differentiator is quality at price for clear tradeoffs, and their lenses often succeed, curious if this might. Tough market, though.

Still no GPS. What's WRONG with you, camera makers?

I have an older camera with GPS, it takes many minutes after turning on to acquire a gps fix, usually I’ve taken my photo and turned it off again long before it’s found a gps fix. It also drains the battery.

Meanwhile my Sony camera acquires a location from my phone instantly. That’s why gps has been removed, it’s so much better to acquire location from your phone which always has a fix.

I also self host Dawarich which has a log of my location and can plug in to Immich to fill in location metadata for any photos which are missing it.

It requires installing a crapp that never works well, and enabling it to get the position in the background.

I made a physical GPS logger a while ago with AGPS support (over BT), and it's now trivial to do. There's also the most trivial thing possible: after you take a photo, start getting a fix, and update the GPS position on the photo once the fix is acquired.

What's the point of GPS on a camera? You don't remember where you took your photos? I'm genuinely interested in the use case of this.

Geotagging. I want to know the exact locations of pictures that I took during my travels. I also usually don't copy photos immediately.

Sure, I have workarounds. When taking pictures with my camera, I also typically take a picture with my phone to get a fix. Then I can copy-paste the location in Immich.

Oh, and another thing that GPS buys: automatic timezones. I always keep forgetting to set the time and date on my camera.

Why not but.. No grip, with a zoom it can become complicated to hold the whole thing properly. And at what price? On the other hand, regarding miniaturization, it’s a success.

Sigma are like the Cybertruck of cameras. Impractical sharp shape, expensive, lacking in practical features professionals actually need. But appeal to larping tech bros who have enough money to buy them just to visually stand out.

They make great lenses, but the camera bodies are all compromise with no low price to reflect it.

Nice,nice. Is this a Foveon design?

This uses a partially-stacked bayer sensor, same as that in the Nikon Z6III and Panasonic S1 II (most likely, or very close to it).

New Foveon is a long ways away still, they basically scraped what they had -

https://petapixel.com/2025/10/27/sigma-says-full-frame-foveo...

“But there are — to be honest, the project has been a little bit delayed… because every time we run the wafer and get the prototype sensor, we found some technical issues because we have never designed a sensor by ourselves."

They bought this technology in 2008. What have they been doing?!

Foveon while a good idea, is extremely complicated to get right from what I understand.

I imagine that different silicon fabs or even different runs of the same fab have slightly different absorption on each focal plan in the sensor and calibrating that at high quality is tricky? Can you even do BSI? I have no idea

oops, I breathed on my camera and that flimsy screen just broke off

Odd to have a modern camera released without photo signing

there's no threat model for this (mass-media image authenticity verification) that attestation solves. i mean, i know people will say that there is, but they're all wrong haha.

Yeah, there are plenty of modern cameras that don't have it, but it would still be nice for Sigma to join the other camera manufacturers that are supporting C2PA.

The standard needs a bit more baking before it's quite ready IMO

https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/1102-C...

https://hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/1077-Googl...

https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/1037-C...

https://www.da.vidbuchanan.co.uk/blog/android-c2pa.html

C2PA would use signing, but even having signing at all would be useful. Sony signs with a Sony key, and that goes into c2pa. Having a public or uploadable key would be nice

Hell it doesn't even have IBIS. I suppose they have to cut corners somewhere for the size constraint.

I wonder if we can create a small device that sits on the camera hot shoe with a crappy camera that takes a “verified photo” every time you press the shutter button. You use the main camera photo primarily but if anyone cares to verify you can look at the embedded verified version to see it’s largely the same.

Maybe, but the camera software would need to support it, and at that point it might as well be in the OS

Good thing Sigma is moving forward with this concept, FP was close to being a cult camera if not for some flaws.

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