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

TM Broadcast InternationalVideo

Study: SRT strengthens its lead as internet video contribution expands

11.04

AI generated image Rethink TV, a division of Rethink Technology Research, has published its “Open Internet Contribution Protocols Forecast: 2026-2032” , analysing the global adoption and revenue of…

Video & streaming

Read at TM Broadcast International ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Study: SRT strengthens its lead as internet video contribution expands

Related

VideoSPECIAL | Belgium’s VRT innovation strategy: turning experimentation into real-world value TM Broadcast International

VideoEDITORIAL | A public broadcaster making video games: innovation through convergence TM Broadcast International

VideoSES and German news broadcaster WELT TV extend satellite partnership into the next decade TM Broadcast International

VideoBlackmagic Design launches UltraStudio Express HD for analog and digital video capture and playback TM Broadcast International

SpainAdiós a 'Fallout': Walton Goggins, actor del Necrófago, se despide de la serie de Prime Video y preocupa a los espectadores Cinemanía

CinemaDJI Osmo Pocket 4P Firmware V01.02.1149 Released – 18x Zoom, Smoother Lens Switching and Scene Presets CineD