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

DIY DronesDrones

Adding Long-Range Target Measurement (300m–1500m) to a Custom Drone Gimbal: Hardware & Alignment Guide

09.16

Integrating Long-Range Optical Ranging into a Custom UAV Gimbal Most DIY drone builders are familiar with down-facing LiDAR or optical flow sensors for altitude holding and terrain following.

Video & streaming Drones & action Lighting & rigs

Read at DIY Drones ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Adding Long-Range Target Measurement (300m–1500m) to a Custom Drone Gimbal: Hardware & Alignment Guide

Related

ReviewsWatch out, DJI: This pocket gimbal camera can turn into an action camera Android Authority camera

ReviewsThis Chinese brand just combined a pocket gimbal camera and an autonomous drone into one ingenious device T3 cameras

ReviewsInsta360 Luna Ultra Review: This Is the Only Gimbal Camera You Need Gizmodo cameras

ReviewsInsta360’s New Gimbal Vlogging Camera May Be Too Capable for Its Own Good Gizmodo cameras

ReviewsI tested the DJI RS 5 — and it's a super charged gimbal that content creators will love Tom's Guide cameras

ChinaBest Gimbal for GoPro and Action Cameras in 2026 Hohem blog