5 frames with Orwo Wolfen NC500 and a Yashica Electro 35 CC

I started shooting film when I began high school, at the age of 15. Back then, film was making a comeback and rising in popularity in my home country, which means prices were also increasing. I remembered saving up my monthly allowances from my parents to afford a Minolta X-700 with a Rokkor MC 50mm f/1.4 lens, and it remains one of my favourite cameras until this day. Doing analogue photography while being a teen in high school meant that I was always looking for the cheapest way physically possible to shoot film. That included using heavily expired and bulk-loaded motion picture film stocks (it was, and still is, a common thing in my home country!) sold by small and independent sellers.

Reflecting on that high school period, while choosing those film stocks was indeed a conscious choice to cut costs, I certainly also enjoyed the process of shooting them a lot (and often the results too). I love searching for peculiar, not-widely-known and old film stocks. I love shooting and experimenting with them, not knowing what wild results I may get. Sometimes, the photos I got were disappointing but a lot of the times, they were a pleasant surprise and surpassed my expectations.

The surprise factor of these film stocks combined with the inherent delayed gratification nature of analog photography was addicting, and they have become an integral part in how I shoot film. I now constantly look forward to trying out new and unusual stuff. Of course, there are times when I get tired of this experimental-loving side and just want to shoot something safe and familiar. Most of the time though, I find myself gravitating towards the ones I have never tried before.

Enough of my rambling on why I love strange film stocks and onto the actual topic: Orwo Wolfen NC500. This is a relatively new colour negative film stock that is said to be based on Agfa XT320, a motion picture film used in ‘Out of Africa’, ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’,…

I recently bought a Yashica Electro 35 CC and was looking to do a test roll with it. I initially picked Ilford FP4+, however, the roll came out blank because it was not properly wound onto the take up spool (an unbelievably stupid mistake I never thought I would make, especially when I have shot film for some time and have always loaded the roll correctly!).

To be honest, I am not sure why I picked the Orwo Wolfen NC500 as a test roll. Looking the stock up on the Internet returns quite negative results. The general consensus is that Wolfen NC500 is very muted, grainy, low contrast, quite muddy in the shadow areas, not flexible and can have strange colour casts. Many people seem to dislike it, with some comparing it to expired film stocks. Well, considering that I am (somewhat) infatuated with peculiar and expired film stocks, I was intrigued. Between Orwo Wolfen NC500 and Harman Phoenix 200 as the only 35mm film rolls I had left at that time, I decided to go with the former.

With all the reviews and opinions I’ve read about Wolfen NC500, I loaded it into my Yashica and headed out with excitement of what results I would get. I rated it at 200 ISO, since I saw people recommending overexposing it by a half to 1 stop. I shot it on bright sunny days only considering how muted it can get.

First impression: this stock is definitely how people describe it: muted, grainy and low contrast. It doesn’t look very sharp either. I had to add in quite a bit of contrast and saturation. The sky is almost completely washed out when it was actually a bright vibrant blue that day. Other than that, it is a look that I quite like.

To see how muted the film is, here is a shot of the exact same scene I shot on my Fujifilm X-T3 with no edits, using the standard film simulation:

I believe that the film lacks the usual orange base on most colour negative film, which can be difficult to colour correct for lab scans. The photograph above actually looks like this unedited when I received the scan from the lab:

I am delighted that this was a very successful test roll. Moreover, I am pleased with the results that Orwo Wolfen NC500 gave me. I can see why people may dislike it though, with its desaturated, grainy look and high cost (I got it for about 15 euros). It is something very different from the currently available film stocks. Nevertheless, I am glad that there are more options for us to choose from, and I can definitely see myself using this film more in the future.

Thanks for reading!

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