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

Amateur PhotographerReviews

Sigma FP2 review – this likeable little camera might just be the best compact full-frame mirrorless yet

10.23

Amateur Photographer verdict With its petite size, snappy autofocus and tilting rear screen, the Sigma FP2 is a likeable little camera that packs a surprising punch.

Mirrorless bodies Lenses Reviews

Read at Amateur Photographer ↗

Also covered by: Photo Review, Y.M.Cinema, Canon Rumors, ProVideo Coalition, The-Digital-Picture Canon News

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Sigma FP2 review – this likeable little camera might just be the best compact full-frame mirrorless yet

Related

NetherlandsFull Review Sigma 15mm F1.4 Contemporary – Betaalbare lichtsterke groothoek voor APS-C Camerastuffreview

ReviewsSirui Aurora 35 mm f/1.4 - lens review Lenstip

ReviewsSigma 120-300mm f/2.8 for Sports Photography (APS-C Review) MRashad Photography

ReviewsThe new world’s smallest full-frame mirrorless camera packs a serious punch Amateur Photographer

ReviewsSigma FP2: everything is better for the second-gen modular mirrorless camera DPReview

ReviewsSmallRig's $58.99 Waist-Level Finder Fits 31 Cameras, and the Ricoh GR Is the One That Needs It Camera Decision