Sigma told us many months ago here, that the Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 for Fujifilm X mount will come in December.
Well, it seems it is about to happen as the first stores started to list it on their websites.
The first one has to be New Zealand located store photowarehouse, who has listed it here (thanks Massimo for letting me know via the revived contact form)
But all those statements were made back in early 2022.
So has something changed? Did the parts shortage or the price increase on those parts due to inflation change the plans at Sigma and possibly even delayed the lens?
Well, I am happy to report that Sigma is still on track to release the Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 for X mount within this year.
This has in fact just been confirmed by the Sigma CEO himself, who in the latest Sigma Stage talk video confirmed that the lens is scheduled for “end of 2022 release“.
In the latest Fujifilm X Talk episode, Fujifilm manager Ueno talks to Mr. Ozone, general manager of Sigma product planning department.
The automatic YouTube translation is very bad, but luckily the Japanese guys at dclife made a summary, which Google Translate makes a good job to translate.
Fujifilm first contacted Sigma 9 years ago
Sigma wants to increase mount supports and is grateful Fujifilm opened the X mount protocols
Fuji users are used to aperture rings. But changing the current design to implement an aperture ring would have raised the costs of the lenses
Sigma released lenses that are already covered by Fujinon XF lenses, so they thought demand would be low. But turns out the demand was surprisingly higher than expected
“In addition, the lens configuration of “XF35mmF1.4 R” and MTF curve lens design discussions are exciting, and it is the first part that makes you two really like lenses or have passion.”
Many were skeptical, when Sigma released lenses that are similar to existing Fujinon lenses, and predicted the same debacle of the Zeiss Touit lenses. However, here on FujiRumors we always told you that that won’t be the case for the reasons we explained here.
Next up, the Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8, which will come in December and I expect to become Sigma’s best selling X mount lens by a large margin.
Since Fujifilm opened its lens protocols to third party manufacturers, lots have happened rather quickly in terms of autofocus lenses for the X system.
When Sigma launched their new Fujifilm X mount trinity, we had a huge live blog here on FujiRumors, where we could see that these are very fine lenses.
Down below a summary in case you are in a hurry and can’t watch the video right now (plus a few personal notes).