Sigma

Sigma Corporation is a privately held Japanese company that makes interchangeable lenses, digital cameras and electronic flashes. Michihiro Yamaki founded it in Setagaya, Tokyo, in September 1961 as Sigma Research Institute, and it took the name Sigma Corporation in 1970. Yamaki led the company until his death in 2012; his son, Kazuto Yamaki, is now chief executive, and the company has been family-owned since its founding.

Sigma has been headquartered in Kawasaki, Kanagawa, since 2005. Its products are made at its own factory in Bandai, Fukushima, which opened in 1973, and it sells through subsidiaries in the United States, Europe, Hong Kong and China, the first of which opened in Germany in 1979.

Sigma's first products in 1961 were a teleconverter and a 200mm lens, and it has since made lenses for other companies' camera mounts as well as its own. Its SD9 of 2002 was the first DSLR to use the Foveon X3 sensor, and Sigma bought Foveon in 2008. It announced its cine lens line in 2016, joined Leica and Panasonic in the L-Mount Alliance in 2018, and released the full-frame fp camera in 2019.