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

British CinematographerCinema

Wooden Camera introduces new cage and accessory system for Sony FX5

October 15

Wooden Camera has announced a new professional cage and accessory collection for the Sony FX5, “giving filmmakers a modular foundation for building the camera around their individual production…

Lighting & rigs

Read at British Cinematographer ↗

Also covered by: RedShark News, PRONEWS, TV Technology

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Wooden Camera introduces new cage and accessory system for Sony FX5

Related

CinemaNiSi ATHENA Drop-In PL Adapters and True Color VND/PL Released – Rear Filter Slot for PL Lenses, 1-5 Stop VND With Independent Polarizer CineD

CinemaSmallRig L-Series/NP-F970 USB-C Rechargeable Camera Battery on sale for $49.99 USD Newsshooter

CinemaWooden Camera Sony FX5 cage: price, release date RedShark News

CinemaSave $400 USD on the Sachtler FSB-6 Fluid Head & flowtech 75mm Tripod System MS Mk II Newsshooter

CinemaAdd a Dovetail Mounting Bracket to Your Tilta Hydra Electronic Suction Cup Setups With This Quick Add-On No Film School

GermanyGodox A2: Kompakter Xenonblitz für die Smartphone-Fotografie DOCMA