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

Camera JabberReviews

Leitz Photographica Auction 49: rare Leica Box, Salgado’s Leica R6 and an Elcan 66mm under the hammer

11.01

More than 400 lots go under the hammer in Wetzlar on 28 November, including an exceptionally rare 1950s Leica Box camera and a Leica R6 that belonged to the late Sebastião Salgado.

Lenses

Read at Camera Jabber ↗

Also covered by: ePHOTOzine

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Leitz Photographica Auction 49: rare Leica Box, Salgado’s Leica R6 and an Elcan 66mm under the hammer

Related

ReviewsTTArtisan AF 50mm f/1.8 Neo gets a new green and titanium finish Camera Jabber

ReviewsHarman Photo launches film cases, lens cloth and notebook for film photographers Camera Jabber

RumoursNew GoPro Mission 1 PRO ILS adapting coolness from Fotodiox 43 Rumors

ReviewsFujifilm Released One X-Mount Lens in 2026, and Third Parties Released 16 Autofocus Ones Camera Decision

RumoursSamyang is teasing the launch of the new 28-135mm f/2.8 lens. Coming first for E-mount and later for L-mount. L-Rumors

ReviewsReview: Sirui Vision Prime 15mm T1.6 (Cine Lens) Phillip Reeve