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Last year, there was an explosion of new film releases from a rebirthed ORWO; while some are variants of their popular black & white motion picture stocks, they also showed off two new colour films. There is still a lot of controversy around ORWO, especially in their future and future film manufacturing capacities. This month, I’m covering one of the two colour film stocks ORWO released last year, NC500. According to the ORWO website, NC500 is based on a classic Agfa colour motion picture film stock. The same film stock used to film the 1985 film, Out of Africa. But this is a new filmRead More →

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Have you already reviewed this film? The answer would be yes and also no. ORWO Wolfen NP100 is a film that is a variant of the cult favourite motion picture film, UN54+. However, the folks at Filmotec have added an anti-halation and anti-static layer to the film stock to make it better for still photography. And that’s enough of a change for me to warrant a full-on review. Now the history of ORWO is complicated; the company was formed from the original home of Agfa in the German town of Wolfen. When World War Two divided Germany in the post-war era, Wolfen ended up inRead More →

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When people hear the name ORWO, they mostly think of their brilliant motion picture films, UN54 and N74. Their newer offerings include the recently announced but yet-to-arrive NP100 and NP400 plus NC500. But that is only a small cross-section of their original offerings. ORWO, or rather ORiginal WOlfen is built in Wolfen, Germany, the original Agfa plant that ended up on the eastern side of the iron curtain and continued to produce films and developers after World War Two through the Cold War. Their films became popular among photographers in East German and the Soviet Bloc. My first experience with ORWO films is one ofRead More →

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The original slow film offering from Lomography and one with a great name, Fantome! I had initially thought that I wouldn’t jump on these right off the bat. However, after seeing some early results, I decided to give this slow offering a try. And don’t let the slow speed concern you; you can quickly shoot this film handheld on bright sunny days, although unlike last months film, I did shoot a roll on a tripod to see how well it handled long exposure. Fantome 8, like Babylon 13, is a repurposed ORWO film. ORWO DP31 is a positive archival duplication film designed to produce duplicatesRead More →

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One of the film community’s biggest photography trends is the use of speciality motion picture films for regular photographic applications. You saw the rise in popularity in films such as Eastman 2238 and Fuji 4791. Well, Lomography jumped onto the bandwagon with a pair of releases last year. Both were rerolled films from Filmotec/ORWO. The second release of these films came in Babylon 13, with Lomography publishing times for shooting at ASA-12. Having ordered the traditional five-pack, I found that the film, in reality, if ORWO DN21. As the name suggests, DN21 is a duplicating film, acting as an inter-negative between a master positive andRead More →

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No strangers on this bridge, Lomography Potsdam 100 is the second film released in their Kino series of films. Potsdam 100 is ORWO UN54 a film that I have shot a lot with for the past several years. Compared to N74, UN54 is super sharp, fine-grained and has a fantastic tonality and one I have only developed in a limited number of developers, so I’m looking forward to trying it out in different developers. Designed as Eastern Europe version of Kodak Plus-X and it certainly shows. What struck me is that the film is marked as Lomography Potsdam in the rebate area, which means thatRead More →

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Found in a dusty warehouse, based on where the film came from, Sweeden, Lomography promoted their Berlin 400 as an iconic cinematic film. 400-Speed, Black & White, and from East Germany. Well, that certainly narrowed it down to only one film, thankfully it is one that I did have planned to review at a later date, so why not discuss it under the Lomography Brand! The film, if you haven’t already guessed is ORWO N74, which made collecting developing formulas easy. Shooting cinematic film in still cameras is nothing new, at least for me, I still love shooting Double-X for urban work, so getting intoRead More →