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

Tela VivaLatAm

"Me Filma", novo longa do diretor Victor Ribeiro, estreia em São Paulo e em Los Angeles

11.04

Documentário fica em cartaz no Cine Olido, em SP, e está entre os selecionados para exibição no LABRFF - Los Angeles Brazilian Film Festival

Read at Tela Viva ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

"Me Filma", novo longa do diretor Victor Ribeiro, estreia em São Paulo e em Los Angeles

More from Tela Viva on Hot Shoe

LatAmMobifilm 2026 reúne 37 filmes e promove debates sobre mobilidade urbana, transporte público e segurança viária Tela Viva

LatAmWarner Bros. e Cordeluz Audiovisual coproduzem o especial de Halloween "Zombie Pet Shop" Tela Viva

LatAmAPRO e Felsberg Advogados lançam guia prático sobre os impactos da Reforma Tributária no setor audiovisual Tela Viva

LatAmConferência Internacional do Audiovisual da CPLP reúne autoridades em Lisboa Tela Viva

LatAmCoalizão global alerta governo brasileiro sobre patentes que ameaçam investimentos no audiovisual Tela Viva

LatAmBandplay amplia catálogo de minidramas com cinco estreias exclusivas Tela Viva