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

Digitalkamera.deGermany

Chip Foto-Video 11/2026 als PDF auf digitalkamera.de

October 7

Die Chip Foto-Video 11/2026 enthält ausführliche Tests der OM System Pen, des Canon RF 20-50 mm F4 L IS USM PZ und des Sony FE 100-400 mm F5.6-8 OSS.

Lenses Video & streaming

Read at Digitalkamera.de ↗

One letter a week, in your inbox.

Latest

Chip Foto-Video 11/2026 als PDF auf digitalkamera.de

Related

ReviewsPanasonic’s S5 II X is a video monster, and it just got £200 cheaper Digital Camera World

ReviewsBest compact camera in 2026: these are my top point-and-shoots for photos and video Amateur Photographer

ReviewsSony’s super-small camera punches well above its weight and is now cheaper (with lens and a WHOLE lot more!) Amateur Photographer

CinemaHuawei Launch Event – Mate90 Mobile Phone Series, Ruiying Z10 1-Inch Sensor Modular Camera, and a DJI Osmo Pocket 4 Collaboration CineD

CinemaPanasonic LUMIX S9 Firmware 2.1 Brings 4K60 in MP4 Lite Mode, Expanded Lens Fn Button Functions, and More CineD

VideoPanasonic Introduces Compact LUMIX S 20mm F2.5 and Expands S9 Video Capabilities 4K Shooters