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

EpisodiNordics

Adam Driverilta kohtalaisen tyly vastaus Star Warsiin paluusta

11.05

Star Wars -fanit eivät ole luovuttaneet vieläkään Ben Solon suhteen. Hahmon tarina päättyi vuoden 2019 elokuvassa Star Wars: Skywalkerin nousu, mutta moni toivoo edelleen Adam Driverin palaavan Kylo…

Read at Episodi ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Adam Driverilta kohtalaisen tyly vastaus Star Warsiin paluusta

More from Episodi on Hot Shoe

NordicsScarlett Johanssonin Batman-rooli aiheutti yllättäviä vaikeuksia: ”Koin eksistentiaalista ahdistusta” Episodi

NordicsRussell Brand todettiin syylliseksi raiskaukseen ja kolmeen seksuaaliseen ahdisteluun Episodi

NordicsNyt ilmaiskatselussa: Entinen agentti lähtee kostoretkelle – potkut saanut ohjaaja teki elokuvasta uusintaversion Episodi

NordicsTämä kehuttu kauhuelokuva löytyy nyt HBO Maxista – ”Pitkitettyä, piinaavaa jännitystä äkkisäikytysten sijaan” Episodi

NordicsJean-Claude Van Damme palaa taistelukehään – uudessa elokuvassa vastassa on yakuza Episodi

NordicsRakastettu 1990-luvun fantasiasarja tuli maksutta suoratoistoon – kahdeksan tuotantokautta ja 178 jaksoa Episodi