I am very glad to have the opportunity to meet you and ask you a few questions about the art of photography.
Which photographs impress you the most personally? Those that are technically flawless or those that are emotionally powerful?
When it comes to photography, it always impresses me the photography that creates an emotional feeling. Technology is just the thing to support artists or photographers. Photography has been something to move people's minds. So, emotional photography always impresses me.
Kazuto, nice to meet you here in Kazakhstan. What does success mean to your company? Strong sales, technology innovation, or making a lasting impact on photography?
First of all, I believe the minimum requirement of the company is to continue the business—continue the business, secure the employees' jobs, and share the profit with the business partners. And also pay the corporate tax to the country. I think this is an important responsibility of the company, and also we need to continue for many, many years. But if we achieve it, we have mainly three corporate missions, and two of them are very important. First, we would like to become the company that continuously produces the highest quality, highest performance, the most innovative, and the most beautiful products. And the second mission is to become the company that is the most beloved by customers, business partners, and the local community. These are our corporate missions, but if I need to choose one, making the innovation and producing the innovative products is the most important.
Does your company have a philosophy that takes precedence over commercial success?
Creating innovative products is the most important mission. But my father told me when I was a small kid, photography is a good business because people take photos when people are happy. So, he said photography is a happy business. He wanted to persuade me to take over his business. He had been telling me these kinds of things when I was a small kid, like five or six years old. So, if I choose the ultimate success of the company, it is to make people happy.
Have there been moments when you consciously walked away from a profitable opportunity to protect your brand's reputation?
Yeah, several times. Actually, in the mid-'90s to late '90s, many companies asked us to make a lens unit for compact digital cameras because, at that time, compact digital cameras were booming. I believe we could make instant money, but if we prioritized such a business, we might forget to create innovative products. Of course, it was a great opportunity for us to grow into a big company, but I did not accept it. And after that, several companies—not many, but maybe one or two phone companies—approached us for a licensing business to put our name on the phone. At that time, I did not believe that we could contribute to the performance or quality of the phone, so I did not accept.
How are new lenses changing the language of photography?
The lens is just a tool, so basically it has nothing to do with the nature of photography, but technology can contribute to the development of photography. For example, in the past, due to the limitation of the hardware—I mean the limitation of the camera and the lenses—some photography was not possible. But today, thanks to the development of technology, some extreme photography has become possible. So, again, technology has nothing to do with the creation of the artist, but we can contribute to the development of photo culture.
Are there photographs today that would be impossible to create without modern technology?
We have the super fast wide-angle lenses: 14mm f/1.4 and 15mm f/1.4. In the past, this kind of lens suffered a lot of coma in the corner of the frame. Our lens achieves very good performance on the coma in the corner. So, if you shoot astrophotography, you can shoot the stars without coma, which was not possible in the past. I like traditional photography, prints in a frame—this is good. But now photography is becoming more like a part of total visual arts. So, photography is merged with some video, music, installation, and not only cameras and lenses, but also many technologies can contribute to the development of photography.
How does the lens shape the way viewers perceive reality?
If the camera has a high-resolution sensor today and the lens delivers a very high-resolution image, then the picture becomes more and more realistic. And also it looks three-dimensional. So, I think such an evolution of technology contributes to the reality of photography.
What role do you believe a photo equipment manufacturer should play in supporting and developing the photographic community?
We can support in many ways. For example, in our case, we sponsor several photo festivals. Without such support, the photo festivals cannot continue, cannot exist. Also, we set up the foundation last year, and we started collaboration with some fine photographers. Every year, we choose two or three photographers who have creative ideas. But sometimes even very fine, top-class, world-class photographers cannot find a supporter to realize it.
So, it's a foundation; it's separate from our business. The Sigma Foundation is quite a small foundation, but we always try to find very good artists, talented artists who have no support. We are very happy to support.
Photographers can just apply somewhere on a website to—
Right now, we do not do that. We just do research by ourselves. We have a committee, and each committee member researches and pitches the idea in the conference.
What brings photographers together today? Ideas or technology? What do you know then?
Ideas. I think getting together and exchanging opinions are the most efficient and the best way to do creation. When I was a student, I read the biography of the famous physicist; his name is Heisenberg. The title of the book in English is something like *Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations* [The Part and the Whole]. But basically, it's a biography. During that time, including Einstein, there were so many talented physicists, especially as quantum physics was evolving. And I believed Dr. Heisenberg was a super sharp person and super talented person. But when I read his biography, he always got together with other physicists. Sometimes he went skiing, and at night, he had a conversation with very top-class physicists in front of the charcoal fire and got some ideas. So, I think getting together and exchanging opinions with talented photographers supports each photographer.
How have photographers' expectations and needs evolved over the past 10 years?
Actually, people say that necessity is the mother of invention. Customers always go beyond our expectations; they have creative ideas. So, Sigma always tries to listen to the photographers' ideas. Every year, I take several engineers to countries mainly to have roundtables. We bring maybe 10 engineers and have them meet photographers, filmmakers, or DOPs and listen to their opinions. So, I think the photographers' voice helps a lot with technological development.
What can photo equipment manufacturers learn from photographers?
Actually, they always use our equipment beyond our expectations. I really respect photographers and artists because they use our equipment in other ways to create something new. So, we always learn everything from photographers.
