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

← Hot Shoe Archive

Les Numériques PhotoFrance

Actualité : Flash Prime - Le téléviseur Xiaomi TV Max de 85 pouces (QLED, 144 Hz) est à 899 €

October 6

Cette TV QLED de 85 pouces vise les grands salons, les films du soir comme les consoles récentes. Avec Google TV et 144 Hz, l'offre gagne en pertinence pour ce niveau d'équipement.

Smartphones Lighting & rigs

Read at Les Numériques Photo ↗

One letter a week, in your inbox.

Latest

Actualité : Flash Prime - Le téléviseur Xiaomi TV Max de 85 pouces (QLED, 144 Hz) est à 899 €

Related

CinemaGodox Litemons SR20R Introduced – Full-Color Ring Panel with Smartphone Camera Control and Built-In Battery CineD

FranceActualité : Flash Prime Day : les robots de piscine Beatbot Sora 70, 30 et 10 chutent jusqu'à 426 € Les Numériques Photo

FranceActualité : Flash Prime - L'aspirateur robot Ecovacs X11 Pro Omni est à 549 € Les Numériques Photo

CinemaVivo X500 Pro: video specs, price, and release RedShark News

CinemaSmallRig Autumn Sale – Up to 30% Off TRIBEX Tripods, V-Mount Batteries, and Sony FX5 Cages CineD

ReviewsFujifilm XF 50-140mm F2.8 II Rumored a Third Smaller With No Tripod Collar, Which Would Put It at XF 55-200 Size Camera Decision