Braun Nizo 801 Macro

Type: Super 8 · Motion Picture

The Braun Nizo is a Super8mm camera renowned for its quiet operation and, of course, as a piece of history from Dieter Rams designs. I rely on it as a workhorse for capturing my family memories.

I'm a fan of that Braun design era, so owning a piece of it matters to me. But it isn't only an object I like having around. Those designs were built for the long term rather than for a consumer upgrade cycle, and this one still works.

That is what I love about film. The medium still exists and it isn't a black box. You pick up a sixty year old camera and it performs like day one, only now with better stocks than it had back then.

The phone and the Nizo both have a place. With a phone you shoot every day, it gets random and things get lost. I have well over a thousand videos from the past years and they are too fragmented to find anything in. With Super 8 you go for specific moments, and because the roll is short, those moments almost edit themselves inside that timeframe. When we sit down as a family to watch something back, it is usually through the lens of the Nizo.

For stock I use 50D. The camera's built-in light meter performs best with it and it gives the best results.

My kids were born into the age of AI. Shooting film is one of the few things that makes them understand the medium: that you have to wait for it to be developed and come back, instead of consuming it in real time. They ask sometimes if they can see what we shot, and they wait patiently. When it finally comes back, they go back to it and remember.