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

Digital Camera WorldReviews

Harlowe x Adele Chan Sol 30 Spectra Creator Kit review: an eye-catching LED with a retro design

October 9

Harlowe (part of AEC Lighting Solutions Co. Ltd., a lighting company with more than 20 years’ experience) designs lights for photographers, filmmakers, and content creators.

Reviews

Read at Digital Camera World ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Harlowe x Adele Chan Sol 30 Spectra Creator Kit review: an eye-catching LED with a retro design

Related

ReviewsASUS ProArt Display OLED PA279CDV Professional Monitor review Digital Camera World

ReviewsAnker Nano 45W Smart Display Charger review: a tiny charger with a surprisingly useful screen Digital Camera World

ReviewsLomography DigitaLIZA MAX film scanner review: an affordable way to turn your phone into a film scanner Digital Camera World

ReviewsAnker MagGo Power Bank 2 Pro review: the coolest wireless power bank around? Digital Camera World

FilmPoppies and Pembrokeshire with Max Lamdin and the Lomo MC-A Lomography

ReviewsNikkor Z 14-24mm f/2.8 S Review OpticalLimits