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

Vain aikuisille: Pikkukaupungin Halloween-rituaali on armoton metsästys – vain teinit saavat saalistaa hirviötä

10.24

Vuoteen 1963 sijoittuva Dark Harvest (2023) on yliluonnollinen kauhuelokuva, jossa Halloween tarkoittaa eristyksissä sijaitsevan pikkukaupungin asukkaille kaikkea muuta kuin harmitonta juhlintaa.

Read at Episodi ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Vain aikuisille: Pikkukaupungin Halloween-rituaali on armoton metsästys – vain teinit saavat saalistaa hirviötä

More from Episodi on Hot Shoe

NordicsDC:n kauhuelokuva tekee kyseenalaista historiaa – mutta yleisöltä tuli melkoinen yllätys Episodi

NordicsDisney menettämässä supersankarin oikeudet – kulttielokuva odottanut jatkoa jo 35 vuotta Episodi

NordicsMarvelin uusi Avengers: Doomsday -traileri julkaistiin – Doctor Doom saapuu pilaamaan juhlat Episodi

NordicsStanley Kubrick, 3000 piirasta ja kohtaus, jota kukaan ei saanut nähdä – klassikkoelokuvan alkuperäinen loppu oli jotain aivan muuta Episodi

NordicsRidley Scottin Alien-suunnitelmat kiihtyvät – luvassa paluu vuosia sitten kesken jääneeseen tarinaan Episodi

NordicsKirjailija ja elokuvaohjaaja Ryū Murakami on kuollut 74-vuotiaana Episodi