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

The PlaylistCinema

‘The Man With The Bag’ Trailer: Arnold Schwarzenegger Plays Santa Claus & Recruits Alan Ritchson For A Christmas Heist

11.02

Thirty years after “ Jingle All the Way ,” Arnold Schwarzenegger is getting back into the Christmas spirit.

Read at The Playlist ↗

Also covered by: First Showing

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

‘The Man With The Bag’ Trailer: Arnold Schwarzenegger Plays Santa Claus & Recruits Alan Ritchson For A Christmas Heist

More from The Playlist on Hot Shoe

CinemaTaika Waititi Slams Critics As “Obsolete, Sad Souls” After ‘Klara & The Sun’ Earns Poor Reviews & Misfires At Box Office The Playlist

Cinema‘You Can See Everything’ Sneaks By ‘Clayface’ To Top Scary Halloween Weekend Box Office The Playlist

Cinema‘Obsession’ Director Curry Barker Has Already Approached Nathan Fielder About Collaborating: “I Put It Out In The Water” The Playlist

CinemaChase Sui Wonders Circling A24’s Raunchy ‘Goblin’ Comedy With Kenneth Branagh, Skyler Gisondo & Will Forte The Playlist

CinemaMatthew Weiner Exits Eddie Murphy’s ‘The Chairman’ Series At Peacock Over Creative Differences The Playlist

Cinema‘Naza’ Trailer: Gaza Documentary Featuring Testimony From 24 Israeli Soldiers Expands To Over 100 Theaters The Playlist