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

Photo District NewsCulture

Color, Shape, Atmosphere: How to Build a Creative Portrait Look

September 19

In this hands-on photo walk, Gilmar Smith will demonstrate how color, light quality, modifiers, shadow, and atmosphere work together to create distinctive images.

Photographers

Read at Photo District News ↗

ReviewsAn English photographer bought a ravaged, wind-lashed Falklands island in 1972 to give it a second chance. Now, as Argentina and Britain argue over the archipelago once again, millions of seabirds continue to benefit from his remarkable vision Digital Camera World

One letter a week, in your inbox.

Latest

Color, Shape, Atmosphere: How to Build a Creative Portrait Look

Related

ReviewsAn English photographer bought a ravaged, wind-lashed Falklands island in 1972 to give it a second chance. Now, as Argentina and Britain argue over the archipelago once again, millions of seabirds continue to benefit from his remarkable vision Digital Camera World

ReviewsIf you’re buying a wildlife camera, don’t ignore the ergonomics Digital Camera World

ReviewsHow Do You Become a Commercial Photographer? (Sort of) Fstoppers

CultureMemleket, Emin Özmen’s 15-Year Portrait of Turkey Magnum Photos

CultureBehind the Scenes with the Architects of Aperture’s New Home Aperture

ReviewsPhotographer Hides Behind Rock as Herd of 400 Wild Reindeer Comes Charging at Him PetaPixel