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

British CinematographerCinema

BFI London Film Festival announces projects in its 2026 ‘Works-In-Progress’ Showcase

October 7

The 70th edition of the BFI London Film Festival Works-in-Progress Showcase will present eight new feature films and documentaries from filmmakers based in the UK and Ireland at Picturehouse Central…

Exhibitions & books

Read at British Cinematographer ↗

One letter a week, in your inbox.

Latest

BFI London Film Festival announces projects in its 2026 ‘Works-In-Progress’ Showcase

Related

CinemaClub Kid to open 15th Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival, The End of It to close British Cinematographer

CinemaStockholm International Film Festival reveals Daddy Issues Spotlight British Cinematographer

CinemaEncounters 2026 winners: Altay Ulan Yang’s Hyena wins Grand Prix British Cinematographer

CinemaPatricia Clarkson-starrer Lilly to open WWIFF 2026 in London British Cinematographer

CinemaZurich Film Festival awards Golden Eyes to films from USA and France British Cinematographer

CinemaFrench Film Festival London reveals full 2026 programme British Cinematographer