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

FotogramasSpain

“Un drama sensible e inteligente”: la película ganadora del Premio del Público en el Festival de Málaga conmueve sin manipular emociones

10.23

Crítica de 'Los niños están bien', la película escrita y dirigida por Nathan Ambrosioni con una brillante Camille Cottin, que interpreta a una mujer que debe hacerse cargo de sus sobrinos abandonados.

Exhibitions & books

Read at Fotogramas ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

“Un drama sensible e inteligente”: la película ganadora del Premio del Público en el Festival de Málaga conmueve sin manipular emociones

Related

Japan【11/6(金)・11/20(金)】ARTE TOKYO×NIGHT MUSEUM 日本カメラ博物館 20時まで開館 JCII Camera Museum

SpainEl Festival de Sevilla anuncia los 58 proyectos seleccionados para ÍNSULA, su nuevo mercado de guiones Producción Audiovisual

SpainEl Festival de Sevilla presenta una programación de actividades profesionales centradas en la internacionalización Producción Audiovisual

Cinema“The Only Living Pickpocket in New York” Premiere Salutes the Pasts of the Big Apple and the Sundance Film Festival Sundance Institute

CinemaCinema Eye Honors Announce Unforgettables, Audience Award Longlist POV Magazine

GermanyDOCMA Award: Neue Heimat für Archiv gesucht DOCMA