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Kazuto Yamaki
Kazuto Yamaki
CEO (Representative Director / President), Sigma Corporation
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SIGMA Aizu Cinema Prime Lenses - A Talk With Kazuto Yamaki-san

📅 Jun 09, 2025 CineD 8 MIN 2344 VIEWS 37 SEGMENTS · 3 SPEAKERS
► Read more: https://www.cined.com/ At Cine Gear, we caught up with Kazuto Yamaki-san, SIGMA’s owner and CEO, to discuss their ambitious new Aizu Prime cinema lens series. This ground-up redesign marks SIGMA’s serious commitment to the professional cinema market. ---------------------------------------­­­­­­­----------------------------------­-­-­-­-­ WATCH / LISTEN TO OUR WEEKLY 🎧 PODCAST "Focus Check": ➡ https://www.cined.com/podcast/ FOLLOW US: 🎥 https://www.CineD.com - unbiased filmmaking tech reviews & news 🧑🏻‍🏫 https://www.MZed.com - best online education for filmmakers & creators ➡ S...

Questions asked in this interview

11
  1. 0:10Hi guys, I'm Johnny from Cinedy and I'm here with Yakisan from Sigma. Yakisan, how are you?
  2. 0:48How long did it take to develop it?
  3. 1:45What was the most challenging part in the whole process of designing those lenses?
  4. 2:18Can I run a little test on you?
  5. 2:47Is it just more time, or...?
  6. 3:14What mounts are those lenses going to have?
  7. 3:36Why did you take this decision?
  8. 4:42Is that a type of answer, like a Japanese answer to the whole revolution with lenses?
  9. 5:37But still, if you're aiming for high-end cinematographers or end users, who is the customer here?
  10. 6:42What would be your advice — just to try your lenses, or...?
  11. 7:21Anything that I forgot to ask, or you would like to say?
Narrator 0:00 ↗
Sigma has 12 new prime lenses. Let's hear more from Yakisan.
You're watching Cinedity, supported by B&H and CVP.
Johnny 0:10 ↗
Hi guys, I'm Johnny from Cinedy and I'm here with Yakisan from Sigma. Yakisan, how are you?
Kazuto Yamaki 0:14 ↗
Good, thank you. Thank you for having me.
Johnny 0:16 ↗
Thank you for talking to us. And you just brought to the market a whole new set of 12 prime lenses, the I-series lenses.
Kazuto Yamaki 0:25 ↗
Yes.
Johnny 0:25 ↗
And first of all, 12 lenses. That sounds like crazy. You're exploding. What's going on?
Kazuto Yamaki 0:32 ↗
Well, we are very serious about our cine lens. So, in order to provide the best set of gears to our customers, we have to do it. So, we just worked hard.
Johnny 0:48 ↗
But usually, I remember you told me in the past that it takes quite a lot of time to develop a lens, right? But it looks to me as though you developed those 12 lenses — I mean, you have now eight and four will come later — in record time. How long did it take to develop it?
Kazuto Yamaki 1:03 ↗
Well, we started this project two and a half years ago. So we planned the whole set in the beginning, and we utilized that asset — I mean, the asset of the optical design — to other lenses, and we optimized the process by planning everything in the beginning.
Johnny 1:27 ↗
Your previous CN lenses were actually based on photo lenses.
Kazuto Yamaki 1:34 ↗
Yes. Completely different. And it's a completely new design, including the totally new optical design. It's a design just for cinema use.
Johnny 1:45 ↗
What was the most challenging part in the whole process of designing those lenses?
Kazuto Yamaki 1:50 ↗
Well, all the lenses in the I-series line achieve T1.3, but these days customers require the light, compact, lightweight design — the form factor. So it was challenging to achieve T1.3 spec and very high image quality, but make it small and compact and lightweight.
Johnny 2:18 ↗
Okay. Can I run a little test on you? I want to see if you remember all the focal lengths of the whole set of lenses. Let's give it a go.
Ready? Let's try.
Kazuto Yamaki 2:33 ↗
18, 21, 25, 27, 32, 35, 40, 50, 65, 75, 100, and 125. Okay, I think so. I think I did it.
Johnny 2:47 ↗
Great. Great. Okay. So what's the reason that you have eight lenses already now ready and four will come later? Is it just more time, or...?
Kazuto Yamaki 2:57 ↗
Yeah, it was ideal if we could release 12 lenses at once, but due to our engineering resources, we couldn't do that. So we prioritized the focal lengths that are most used.

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APA, MLA, BibTeX
APA

Yamaki, K. (2025, June 9). SIGMA Aizu Cinema Prime Lenses - A Talk With Kazuto Yamaki-san [Interview transcript]. CineD. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1030226/

MLA

Kazuto Yamaki. "SIGMA Aizu Cinema Prime Lenses - A Talk With Kazuto Yamaki-san." CineD, 9 Jun. 2025. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1030226/.

BibTeX 
@misc{yamaki2025_1030226,
  author       = {Kazuto Yamaki},
  title        = {SIGMA Aizu Cinema Prime Lenses - A Talk With Kazuto Yamaki-san},
  howpublished = {Interview transcript, CineD. CEOInterviews.AI},
  year         = {2025},
  month        = {jun},
  url          = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1030226/},
  note         = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}