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

This fast, free film grain app gives your photos the film grain look like Kodak Gold – but there is one downside

11.05

This might sound strange to younger generations, but there was once a time when film grain was considered undesirable.

Film & analog

Read at Amateur Photographer ↗

ReviewsAfter seeing these amazing images from the best film camera of the last decade, I’m definitely buying one (plus it comes in two new colours) Amateur Photographer

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

This fast, free film grain app gives your photos the film grain look like Kodak Gold – but there is one downside

Related

ReviewsAfter seeing these amazing images from the best film camera of the last decade, I’m definitely buying one (plus it comes in two new colours) Amateur Photographer

ReviewsLomo MC-A Gets a $649 Gold-Plated Edition and a $599 Noir, and Five Fixes From Its First Year Camera Decision

TechRian Johnson explains why he had to build his own iPhone camera app The Verge Cameras

ReviewsThis Medium Format Film Guide Will Get You Started Faster Than Any Video The Phoblographer

CinemaLomo MC-A Guide: Settings and Tips for Creative Film Photography Lomography

ReviewsThe Preacher Who Patented Flexible Film in 1898 and Died Before Kodak Paid $5 Million for It Fstoppers