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

Amateur PhotographerReviews

iPhone 18 Pro Review – with added photography features, is this now the ultimate camera phone?

October 13

Amateur Photographer verdict The new added photography-centric features of the iPhone 18 Pro make it the best Apple ever in terms of the camera.

Smartphones Reviews

Read at Amateur Photographer ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

iPhone 18 Pro Review – with added photography features, is this now the ultimate camera phone?

Related

CinemaAre Modern Sensors Too Clean? | DJI SDR Transmission 2 Field Tested | Huawei’s Clip-On Camera – Focus Check ep137 CineD

ReviewsFujifilm Instax Pal 2 review – great toy, shame about the camera Amateur Photographer

ReviewsDJI Mic Mini 2S review – Could this be the only mic a content creator needs? Amateur Photographer

ReviewsDon’t bin your old phone – I just saved $100 by setting up my old iPhone as a security camera Amateur Photographer

ReviewsVtech KidiZoom Fun FX Camera Review – my kid loves this super bright and fun toy camera, so will yours! Amateur Photographer

ReviewsGodox wants to turn your iPhone into a ‘pro camera’ with its new A2 Xenon flash Amateur Photographer