The Pentaz 645Z popped up. I started looking at the older 645D as well, but both were still a grand investment. This was around the time award-winning Australian landscape photographer Christian Fletcher started preaching the Sigma Quattro gospel. I’d looked at the Quattros before, thought of them as a gimmicky love child of a boomerang and a remote control, but the more I looked at Christian’s Sigma files, the more I could not tell them apart from those shot with his Phase. Even Christian himself admits the Sigma Quattros are ‘medium format in your pocket’ and some of the best value cameras on the planet. When he told me you can happily print the Sigma files up to 60x40 inches without a problem, I was sold. Combine that with a frame and you’ve got a serious piece of art on your hands. It’s certainly large enough for my purposes.

Honestly, the last camera I expected to buy was a Sigma Quattro. I was expecting to pay $10,000 for a medium format camera, not $999 for a glorified compact, but I’m glad I took the gamble. What I’ve discovered since is that Sigma’s Foveon sensor combined with the fixed lenses of the Quattro series provide mind-blowing amounts of detail and a dimensionality (there’s a word for you) much more in line with medium format. It instantly stands out. I look at my Canon files now (anything non-Foveon, actually) and cringe. The Sigma ‘look’ is something that cannot really be defined, but something I believe will help distinguish my images from everyone else's out there. As someone said once, somewhere, in some place, if everyone is headed in the same direction, the only to stand out is to go against the stream. Amen.