Sigma Answers, er, Dodges Your Questions About the New Lenses

The only third-party lens I’ve ever bought was a Zeiss. While I know that Sigma, Tamron, and others make some decent lenses, I’ve always perceived the main benefit to buying into Nikon or Canon to be the high-quality glass. Lately, though, I’ve been reading more and more reports about really good Sigma lenses. I’m particularly interested in the recently released Sigma 35mm f/1.4. It’s about half the price of the equivalent Nikkor, which I understand to be good, but not worth the astronomical price it commands.

So, I was interested when FStoppers published the linked “interview” with an unnamed person at Sigma to answer questions about the new lenses and their perceived recent increase in quality. I must say the article pissed me off. It’s clear that Sigma didn’t take the questions seriously, and simply fed marketing and PR copy back as “answers”, which in many cases completely ignore the question at-hand.

For instance, here’s the answer to the question, “Have there been any internal changes in the engineering and development side of Sigma (in terms of talent) that has allowed Sigma to make higher quality lenses?”:

“It is not necessarily new talent, but the Sigma factory in Aizu uses an on-site decision-making team paired with a vertically integrated production system, which allows for a higher degree of communication between the entire team. This self-sustaining communication framework enables feedback to go up and down the production chain easier and promotes innovative product design, production efficiency, and productivity. For more detail please visit Sigma’s Global Vision site.”

What the hell does that word salad even mean?

And for a question I was truly interested in an answer to, “Of the three upcoming lenses, the 35mm is the only without Optical Stabilization. Why?”:

“As a first product from the “Art” line, we put our first priority to achieve the best optical performance among the 35mm F1.4 lens group. We believe that we have executed the mission.”

What does that have to do with the decision to omit image stabilization? Is this person suggesting that the optical performance would have been harmed by the addition of image stabilization?

Stuff like this is really a turn-off.