The event was organised by Sigma Nordic ( https://www.sigma-imaging.se/ )
Recently an event on Facebook showed up in my feed, it was Sigma Nordic that were organising a street photo walk with Swedish street photographer Mats Alfredsson. As I had nothing booked and the cost was not that bad and a subject that I enjoy but that I have never attended a class or workshop on the subject of street photography I registered for the event.
As an attendant you had the opportunity to borrow one of Sigmas FP L cameras and some lenses so I jumped on the offer and reserved a camera and a 20mm f2 and a 65mm f2 lensed, more on this later. The reservation process and contacts I had with Sigma Nordic were very good and professional. Sigma Nordic was established in 2021 as a subsidiary of Sigma to run the operations here, so even if they were new I find them having a good potential in the market.
Mats Alfredsson ( https://www.matsalfredsson.com/ ) is a Swedish street photographer and is also involved in the Gothenburg Street Photo Festival ( https://www.gothenburgstreetphotofestival.com/ ).
Mats is an established street photographer who also runs street photography workshops to help spread his philosophy of the art to other photographers. I found his talk at the beginning of the day very inspiring and informative. He has a clear philosophy of the art of street photography that gave me some good things to think and consider during the day. I recommend that you look him up. He is also contributing to SigmaNordics site with short and interesting articles.
The photo walk
The day started with a light breakfast at a hotel on Södermalm in Stockholm where the photowalk was to take place during the day. We gathered at 8.30 and the schedule kicked off at 9 with a short introduction by SigmaNordic. Then Mats spoke for about 2 hours and we had a short break to pick up the camera and lenses that we loaned and we started the photowalk at about 11:30. Everything went smoothly even if we were close to 30 participants, though not everybody borrowed stuff. One thing that I appriciated was that the span of participants was better than I expected. To be honest I was kind of fearing that we would be a bunch of cap wearing middle aged men with a slight swell around our bellies, basically me. But no, there were people from all walks of life, different agegroups and experiences, several different cameras were used. So a big positive in the experience, and I also want to say thank you to all of my fellow participants, I hope you enjoyed the day as much as I did.
As we went out into Stockholm we did get some reactions during the day about the amount of photographers who were out. The walking itself put me up to some 10 000 steps and we worked in 45 – 60 minute increments where we got a place and a time to be at, and in between everybody was out walking and shooting, the walk took us through parts of Södermalm and it was nice to see Stockholm from a different side than I usually do.
And as Mats pointed out you find the best pictures on your way home when you have warmed up and are more relaxed. If you get the chance to go to one of Mats talks or workshops make sure you do that.
The camera and the lenses.
As I mentioned earlier I borrowed a Sigma FP L with some lenses a 20mm f2 and the 65mm f2 (both in DG DN Contemporary L-Mount) and I did promise Emma at Sigma Nordic that I would do a short write up on my experience. So the disclaimer is that Sigma Nordic did provide me with a camera, two lenses and a spare battery, but have no say in what I am writing here.
I have been looking at the Sigma lineup as I found it interesting and I did really want to try it out so see what it is and how it feels. My general opinion of cameras and lenses that are made today is that there is basically nothing bad out on the market since no brand would survive that, a 20 000 Sek (ca 2 000 USD or Euro) camera is similar to others in the same price range, they will have some better things and something that they are behind on, but the overall package is capable of delivering good files, the photographer makes the image 😉 and our jobs as customers is to decide what we prioritise for our needs.
There is no way around it, the Sigma FP L is a brick, but a comfortable brick to carry around. It was surprisingly comfortable to carry and use for a day of photography, I did not have a handgrip and I think that one would make it even more comfortable to carry, but the corners are well machined and the coating does add a bit of traction. The controls were nice with a good haptic feeling. As always it does take some time to really get the hang of new equipment and get the muscle memory set. So I did a few misspresses opening up menus when I wanted to do something else and stuff. But nothing that I found killed the experience.
The FP and FP L strikes me as very minimalistic cameras in their design, which is not a bad thing for street photography. We did not have any manuals to look at or at least I did not bother to look for one, but Sigmas staff were there to answer questions if we had any. However this made it possible to kind of test how intuitive and simple the menus are and how to set up the camera. It was not that difficult at all, and as always with a few more weeks of using it I am sure it would feel better. There is always the learning curve of when to press what and in which direction.
The lenses and autofocus felt fast enough for the situation, though using a 20 mm full frame lens for street photography is really challenging, I did find myself struggling with the composition and constantly underestimating how close I had to be to get the shot I wanted. But that is no fault of the lens, it performed as expected. I should probably have been happier with a 24 or 35 mm lens for the kind of work I am used to. But it was a learning experience. The lenses felt solid and of a quality that matched the body, it is heavier than my usual Fuji XT3 but not so much that it is bothersome. I did change batteries once and the battery life isas can be expected, with the mirrorless cameras you will get shorter battery life than with the old DSLRs, so get over it and carry more batteries.
The 65mm was a dream to use. I even managed to get the courage to ask some people on the street if I could take their picture with it and it did the job excelently.
I did not get to use the viewfinder but I did not really find it necessary, even if the sun was quite strong there were times where a viewfinder would have made certain shots easier. I kind of did miss not having a flippable/ tiltable screen but again you can learn to work around things if you get to know the gear.
It found the Sigma FP L to be a body that grew on me during the day, I even went so far as to say that if I was told I could no longer use my current setup of Fuji gear but instead had to use only Sigma I would probably be ok with it, but there are a few things I think can make it even better from my perspective.
The files are nice to work with and even if most of the captures were in JPG they still had a lot of information to crop and edit. The camera did run out of buffer when I did about 10 -12 raw captures in short succession so that is one thing to consider. Might be that I did not use the fastest card.
Suggestions for the future
This might be a bit pretentious, but it is my page so I want to take the oppertunity to give my impressions and offer a user case from a day of shooting.
The Sigma FP L has a great form factor, it is competent, capable and robust, it does carry easy, it kind of reminded my of my old Panasonic GX 7, or the Fuji X70, and I had no problem with it in my hand for a day of shooting. However there are a few things I would like to see in a future iteration that perhaps is more aimed at the street photo community. So read this as kind of a street photography user case for a street photo version of the line.
I am not a filmmaker and I do not have a lot of interest in film related or hybrid features, the hard setting for photo or cine is a really nice way to do the switch between the two, but for me, you could remove a lot of the film related features and hardware and focus more on a photo centric camera.
A camera is a tool, and as for any artisan or craftsman the tool needs to fit the job or task at hand. Taking from Mats talk on street photography one needs to be intuitive and for having this to work for street photography one needs to set the camera up for the job. One reason I believe many street photographers enjoy Fuji and Leica is because you have access to all of the information about the exposure triangle, at the top of the camera. The top of the camera is my workspace, it is where I plan and set up my work. On my Fujis I just need to glance down and see shutter speed, ISO and f: value, as well as the exposure compensation. I do not need to enter menus, turn on screens etc to do this check or change anything on the go.
This is especially important if you, like me, usually walk around and you spot something interesting in the path, not having to stop and check the screen to see the info is nice. It does not have to be dials as with Fuji it can be a small screen, perhaps with an added simple lightmeter like on the old Nikons + o – to give an indication on the exposure. I can basically do this in my step.
A flippable screen would be a nice addition as I often find using waist level shooting gives interesting perspectives. It would also be nice to have an evf built into the body so that one does not need to add and remove. In my version of the Sigma I would like to see some kind of in body stabilisation, I personally would rather have this than a high capacity for movie features.
My suggestions will probably force Sigma to use a slightly larger body and move away from the idea of a one camera many tasks approach. The current flexibility is great, and while I can understand the marketing aspect of “the world’s smallest full format camera” that by itself should not be the baseline for potential development in the future. A slightly larger body with the features I listed would be very attractive as a main body for street photography. One option could of course be that you have a even greater level of flexibility where the camera brain of sensor and basic stuff is put into a “photo cage” or a “movie cage” that contains different set ups.
All in all I was impressed with the FP L and I do think that Sigma is on to something here. To quote Mattias Burling in his overview on youtube ”it is a fun camera to use”.
Thank you to Sigma Nordic for a great saturday and I am looking forward to the next time.
Jonas – Sharing what I see
