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

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Leica RumorsRumours

New Leica Q3 43 Monochrom camera rumored to be announced in early December 2026

11.05

The Leica Q3 43 Monochrom camera is rumored to be announced in early December 2026 (the February poll was correct). The Q is the best-selling Leica camera, so a new Q3 43M makes complete sense.

Mirrorless bodies Leica Q3 43 Monochrom Leica Q3 43 Monochrom camera

Read at Leica Rumors ↗

RumoursOberwerth announced two new camera bags with former LSI president David Knoble: the Daily and the Overlander Leica Rumors

RumoursIDSWorks released two new products: Leica M11 modular base plate/grip with lens stand and half cases for Leica Q3 43 Leica Rumors

ItalyLaowa 24mm f/2 Zero-D Tilt-Shift: per full frame e medioformato, è il decentrabile più luminoso della categoria Fotocult (IT)

ReviewsLaowa says its new 24mm F2 is the fastest tilt-shift lens yet DPReview

ReviewsLaowa 24mm f/2 Zero-D Tilt-Shift review: tilt, shift and full axis rotation for many and varied mirrorless cameras, and with no noticeable distortion Digital Camera World

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