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

Cinema ExpressIndia

Renee Zellweger, Dominic Sessa, Peter Dinklage to lead Darlington

10.29

Actors Renee Zellweger ( Bridget Jones franchise), Dominic Sessa ( Tony ), and Peter Dinklage ( Game of Thrones ) are set to headline the upcoming high-concept comedy drama Darlington , helmed by…

News

Read at Cinema Express ↗

Also covered by: The Playlist

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Renee Zellweger, Dominic Sessa, Peter Dinklage to lead Darlington

More from Cinema Express on Hot Shoe

IndiaGautham Ram Karthik meets Revathy, latter shares pleasure in seeing former colleague's son Cinema Express

IndiaCraig Mazin reflects on The Last of Us' casting backlash: 'I felt terrible for...' Cinema Express

IndiaJanhvi Kapoor on Peddi controversy: It was a violating experience in a way Cinema Express

IndiaSelma Blair starrer Dead at 27 wraps production Cinema Express

IndiaIran sentences acclaimed film director Jafar Panahi to new prison term after his return home Cinema Express

IndiaChiranjeevi's Megaverse posed to be actor's Netflix debut Cinema Express