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

Camera JabberReviews

Affinity update brings deeper RAW development, Mixed Light Correction and Motion Blur Reduction

September 28

Canva has released a major update to Affinity , its free all-in-one creative app, with more than 60 new features and improvements.

Firmware & software

Read at Camera Jabber ↗

ReviewsCapture One 16.8.6 adds Assisted Review while tethering and wireless tethering for Canon EOS R3 and R6 III Camera Jabber

ReviewsAdobe completes Topaz Labs acquisition – Topaz stays a standalone brand Camera Jabber

ReviewsRØDECaster Video 1.4 firmware adds 4K Capture Mode and brings RØDECaster Sync to the whole range Camera Jabber

Reviews"I searched for the Ruby-topaz Hummingbird for years," says 14-year-old award-winning photographer – until his big day came. He "focused on it just in time" Digital Camera World

One letter a week, in your inbox.

Latest

Affinity update brings deeper RAW development, Mixed Light Correction and Motion Blur Reduction

Related

ReviewsCapture One 16.8.6 adds Assisted Review while tethering and wireless tethering for Canon EOS R3 and R6 III Camera Jabber

ReviewsAdobe completes Topaz Labs acquisition – Topaz stays a standalone brand Camera Jabber

ReviewsRØDECaster Video 1.4 firmware adds 4K Capture Mode and brings RØDECaster Sync to the whole range Camera Jabber

Reviews"I searched for the Ruby-topaz Hummingbird for years," says 14-year-old award-winning photographer – until his big day came. He "focused on it just in time" Digital Camera World

ReviewsThere's More to Good Color in Lightroom Than Color Harmony Fstoppers

CinemaFlanders Scientific Firmware 3.2.14 for XMP & XMP C Series monitors Newsshooter