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

Photo RumorsRumours

Sigma has a new product launch event scheduled for October 24th

October 1

Sigma has scheduled a new product launch event for October 24th: “Be one of the first to experience a new product launch up close” Additional information on the event can be found here , here , and…

Lenses

Read at Photo Rumors ↗

Also covered by: Sony Alpha Rumors

One letter a week, in your inbox.

Latest

Sigma has a new product launch event scheduled for October 24th

Related

RumoursAdditional information on the upcoming Schneider Kreuznach × LK Samyang AF 28-135mm f/2.8 FE lens Photo Rumors

RumoursThe Zhong Yi Pittura 30mm f/2.4 lens for GFX & XCD mount is now available for order Photo Rumors

RumoursVenus Optics announced the Laowa ACRIS AF 35mm f/2.8 1X Macro APO lens for E/Z/EF/RF/L mount Photo Rumors

RumoursJust announced: 7Artisans AF 18mm f/2 lens for Sony E-mount Photo Rumors

RumoursNow available: Brightin Star 50mm f/2 TRI-SIGHT lens (E/RF/Z/L) with three focusing modes Photo Rumors

RumoursWhat else is new? Photo Rumors