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Hot Shoe

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On the calendar

· Trade shows and launch events, this week's stories from each corner of the industry, and what its press is covering.

On view

This week, from that corner the newest stories from the corner of the industry you picked

The wire their own posts, translated

How pictures get made in 2026 from the industry's own reports

Sources

Fetched every six hours, linked to the original

About

The small bracket on top of every camera, from a phone rig to an ARRI.

The hot shoe is where the flash goes, and the microphone, and the monitor, and whatever the next decade bolts on. Every camera has one and nobody photographs it. This magazine is named after it because that is where the whole business meets: the body, the glass, the light, the sound, and the person holding it.

I shot news in Gothenburg for nine years and documentary for hire after that, then stopped taking assignments to write about the tools. Since 2021 I live in Tokyo, ten minutes from the used-camera shops of Shinjuku, which is not an accident: Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, Panasonic, Ricoh and Sigma make almost everything worth pointing at a subject, and their own press writes about it first, in Japanese. So this magazine reads it there, and in German, French, Italian and Spanish, and in English from the reviewers who actually put a card in the slot — around eighty sources and thirty channels, counted and plotted so you can see what is moving.

Bodies and lenses, cinema cameras and drones, film and the darkroom, firmware and the software that finishes the picture, the rumours before the launch and the reviews after it, and the photographers and shows the rest of it is for. I test what I write about on a job before a word goes down. I shoot film on Sundays and do not think that makes me interesting.

A story here is a headline, a short excerpt, one picture and the link to whoever reported it. We never reprint the article, and the picture belongs to the photographer or the maker. A story written in Japanese appears in Japanese, as its author set it down; the link goes to the original.

— Mara Lindqvist, Tokyo

SchoolTrack 1 · Exposure

LESSON · THE CAMERA IN YOUR HANDS

Get the most from your camera

Most cameras ship set to automatic. Ten minutes in the menu, and a few habits, are worth more than a new body.

P

Program

The camera sets both; you can still shift the pair.

A · Av

Aperture priority

You set the opening, the camera sets the time. The everyday mode.

S · Tv

Shutter priority

You set the time for motion, the camera sets the opening.

M

Manual

You set both. For flash, studio, video and night.

Focus

Single (AF-S) locks once: for still subjects.
Continuous (AF-C) keeps tracking: for people who move, sport, animals.
Use one small focus point or eye detection, not the whole frame.
Put focus on a button at the back so the shutter only takes the picture.

Exposure

Look at the histogram, not the screen: a screen lies in sunlight.
Turn on the highlight warning; blinking areas have no detail.
Use exposure compensation, plus or minus, to correct the meter.
Shoot RAW when the light is hard; it holds more to fix later.

Before every shoot

Batteries charged, a spare in the pocket
Card formatted in the camera
Settings back to your normal
Lens and sensor clean
Date and time right
Enough space for RAW

Hold the camera with the left hand under the lens, elbows in, and press the shutter slowly on the out-breath.