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

Week 42, 2026 — Mirrorless bodies

Week 42, 2026. Mirrorless bodies was the signal of the week.

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Week 42, 2026 — Mirrorless bodies

Stories that week

ReviewsLearn How To Improve Your Landscapes Instantly With Mood ePHOTOzine

ReviewsHow To Ensure Your Zoom Compact Shots Are Sharp ePHOTOzine

ReviewsDatacolor Expands SpyderPro with Deep Calibration Mode for Ultimate Color Accuracy ePHOTOzine

ReviewsBest Video Recovery Software for Mac: 5 Picks for 2026 ePHOTOzine

ReviewsePHOTOzine Daily Theme Winners Week 1 October 2026 ePHOTOzine

ReviewsTop Tips On Photographing British Wildlife ePHOTOzine

ReviewsLeica Oskar Barnack Award 2026: Winners and LOBA Women Grant Announced ePHOTOzine

ReviewsDisk Drill 6.3 Adds Panasonic RW2 Support and Faster TIFF Detection for Photographers ePHOTOzine

Reviews5 Ways To Photograph Overdone Scenes Differently ePHOTOzine

ReviewsBob's camera, and working out what to buy ePHOTOzine

ReviewsNew Clever Cleaner Release Lets You Clean Up Your Photo Library Before Upgrading to iOS 27 ePHOTOzine

Reviews7 Creative Indoor Photographic Projects For You To Try ePHOTOzine