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

EpisodiNordics

Tänään tv:ssä: Vuoden 1984 toimintaelokuva kiellettiin Suomessa kokonaan

10.30

Tänään nähdään televisiossa vuonna 1984 valmistunut Red Dawn – punainen vaara. Neuvostoliitto, Kuuba ja Nicaragua hyökkäävät Yhdysvaltoihin, ja pienen Coloradon kaupungin lukiolaiset joutuvat…

Read at Episodi ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Tänään tv:ssä: Vuoden 1984 toimintaelokuva kiellettiin Suomessa kokonaan

More from Episodi on Hot Shoe

NordicsTänään tv:ssä: Tim Burtonin jatko-osa vuoden 1988 kauhuklassikolle nyt ensi kertaa Suomen kanavilla Episodi

NordicsHayden Panettieren kuolema sai lopullisen selityksen – Greenvillen poliisi saattoi tutkintansa päätökseen Episodi

NordicsStar Trek -legenda Patrick Stewartin kuolinsyy selvisi – näyttelijä sairasti kahta vakavaa muistisairautta Episodi

NordicsNyt tulee minisarjan sienimurhaaja Erin Pattersonista – pääosassa nähdään tuttu Yellowjackets-tähti Episodi

NordicsStar Trek- ja X-Men-legenda Patrick Stewart on poissa – näyttelijä oli 86-vuotias Episodi

NordicsGame of Thrones -tähti joutui pakenemaan pommisuojaan Kiovassa – Venäjän ilmaiskut yllättivät näyttelijän Episodi