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

AnimationXpressIndia

Mahesh Babu backs Shortgun Games to build original Indian PC and console titles for global audiences

11.03

Mahesh Babu is taking his storytelling ambitions beyond the silver screen and into the gaming arena. The Indian cinema superstar has joined Mumbai-based Shortgun Games as a strategic investor…

Read at AnimationXpress ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Mahesh Babu backs Shortgun Games to build original Indian PC and console titles for global audiences

More from AnimationXpress on Hot Shoe

IndiaUAE royal and government delegation visits The Pinkfong Company to explore creative partnerships AnimationXpress

IndiaFingersoft puts ‘Hill Climb Racing 3’ in the fast lane with real-time multiplayer AnimationXpress

IndiaNintendo takes ‘Pikmin’ beyond gaming with monthly animated shorts AnimationXpress

India‘Attack on Titan 3’ unleashes new gameplay trailer ahead of December launch AnimationXpress

IndiaGyrus AI leverages contextual intelligence to transform media search and virtual product placement AnimationXpress

IndiaBanyanBoard brings trackerless virtual advertising to live sports broadcasts AnimationXpress