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

Early-career artists selected for Film London’s FLAMIN Fellowship 2026-27 Development Scheme

11.04

Film London has announced the recipients of the 2026/27 FLAMIN Fellowship – a “unique development programme” seeking to “help the next generation of UK artist filmmakers take their work to the next…

Read at British Cinematographer ↗

Also covered by: RogerEbert.com

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Early-career artists selected for Film London’s FLAMIN Fellowship 2026-27 Development Scheme

More from British Cinematographer on Hot Shoe

CinemaBAFTA reveals 2026 BAFTA Breakthrough UK cohort British Cinematographer

CinemaDigital Orchard unites DIT and Video Playback rosters under Orchard Crew British Cinematographer

CinemaTake a sneak peek inside the November/December 2026 edition of British Cinematographer British Cinematographer

CinemaDiane Kruger and Edward Berger honoured at 15th Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival British Cinematographer

CinemaBIFA 2026 nominations announced – including for Best Cinematography British Cinematographer