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

Looks like this new Nikon pro-grade S-line telephoto zoom will be "cheaper" than expected – but many photographers may miss out

10.27

The last DSLR lens Nikon announced, back in 2019, was the Nikon AF-S 120-300mm f/2.8E FL ED SR VR. Its spiritual successor leaked online before Nikon revealed official images or specifications…

Lenses

Read at Digital Camera World ↗

ReviewsTop-quality primes are not cheap – but "one of the finest Nikon Z lenses we've ever seen" just got a very tempting price cut Digital Camera World

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Looks like this new Nikon pro-grade S-line telephoto zoom will be "cheaper" than expected – but many photographers may miss out

Related

ReviewsTop-quality primes are not cheap – but "one of the finest Nikon Z lenses we've ever seen" just got a very tempting price cut Digital Camera World

ReviewsThe Thypoch AF 23mm f/1.4 Sculptor Is the Lightest and Most Affordable Prime of Its Kind PetaPixel

RumoursThypoch 24-50 f/2.8 review by Math Photographer Sony Alpha Rumors

CinemaThypoch Simera-C 100mm T1.9 Announced – Telephoto Prime Completes Seven-Lens Cine Set CineD

GermanySigma FP2: Kompakte Vollformatkamera mit 6K-Video Photoscala

ReviewsThypoch AF 23mm f/1.4 Sculptor Specs Leak at 283g, and the Price Is Still the Only Thing Missing Camera Decision