Long exposure help

[Andrew Hamilton Watts]

Hi all, 

 

Reaching out for some help from someone smarter and more experienced than I. I am hoping someone could explain the difference in how the Braun Nizo line and the Eumig 881 work regarding long exposures.

Because I have a Nizo 480 in hand, I understand that by locking the shutter open, I can then use the intervalometer function as means of controlling my exposures. If I set the intervalometer to 30 seconds, I will be exposing each from for that period. I could then either increase or decrease the exposure time to my needs. 

However, I do not have the Eumig in hand and therefore am trying to understand it based off the manual, which I find to be a bit confusing. Am I correct in understanding that the Eumig determines the length of an exposure in "long time" mode based off the light meter reading? So unlike the Nizo, I am not able to control the exposure time but most rely on the cameras internal meter to do it for me? 

Hope that makes sense! As you can tell I am trying to work this out in my head with little experience so anything regarding this help! 

 

Best, 

Andrew

[Martin Baumgarten]

Both cameras, as well as the high end BAUERs use a similar method.  Your NIZO S-480 is from just before that feature was added to the NIZOs.....it was available on the S-481 etc.  NIZO calls it the Automatic-B, and uses an external meter sensor near the name plate on the front of the camera to read ambient light.  BAUER has a flip out external meter sensor for their long time exposure system.   The problem with doing time exposure in Auto mode is that an change in ambient light not only changes the exposure per frame, but also the running speed.  For example.....using the NIZO [or the others] in their Automatic Time Exposure mode, if a car were to come whizzing by...the bright headlights will suddenly cause the camera to speed up.....since that is how the exposure is shortened per frame.

  While a nice feature for some situations......I always found it more stable exposure wise to calculate the exposure needed via an exposure scale for low light, use a low light external light meter such as a Gossen Luna Pro, Sekonic etc....and then factor in my own figuring based on how I'd like the main subject to appear.   All these cameras will yield a maximum exposure of 1 minute per frame, which is pretty long and works for most things. I was able to film a fountain in a mission courtyard under a full moon using KODACHROME 40A many years ago with my first NIZO.   Pretty amazing....but that was a static scene....so no weird speeded up motion.  I did this at a factory....and the smoke stack smoke moved crazy fast.

The EUMIG has manual exposure control, so just don't use the automatic time exposure metering.   Somewhere there is a switch to open the shutter vane fully......since the time exposure done manually is via that and the Intervalometer Timer set manually anywhere from 5fps to 1 minute, similar to the NIZO and BAUER.  I haven't held one of these EUMIGs in my hands in decades.....so l must refer you to the instruction manual, or perhaps someone else can chime in here with more details.  Best of luck!