Alien Film NC400 Original Wolfen Film Review

I was given this film to use and review by Mark Xiao Chenye who has begun to import and sell Re-spooled Chinese Films. Mark sent me two rolls of Film. The other being a B&W Svema NK-2SH which suffered its own disaster with a suicidal Contax Zeiss 50mm lens and light leak fogging most of the roll – you can see that review here.

The one here is Alien Film NC400 which is a re-spooled Wolfen NC400. You can read about Wolfen NC400 here and see some other examples from Lomography here

It is described thus:

WOLFEN NC400 is proudly still produced in Bitterfeld-Wolfen on the original site where film manufacture has been a tradition since 1910. 

Now I had no idea about this film and knew nothing about it’s qualities and characteristics, in hindsight I should’ve read about it and then decided what scenes this would suit as it is a film with an SFX look, muted tones with a certain characteristic colour cast to the photographs.

It’s a DX Coded ISO 400 Film and that’s what I shot it as on my Minolta Maxxum/Dynax/Alpha 7/A-7 (so many names, I’ll just refer to it as the A-7).

I decided to load it into the safest camera I have, the best fire and forget accurate worry free fastest 35mm  AF camera in my possession (and possibly of all time) the Minolta A-7 on a nice family drive to the Suffolk Coast to visit some castles and beaches.

Things didn’t turn out quite well as I accidentally pressed the wrong button and wound the film to the last frame 12 shots in.

To make matters worse the camera (after 10 years of reliability) at that same point decided to commit suicide and the film door latch broke.

Normally these Minolta’s are superb as you can use the rear LCD to rewind, wind on to any frame you want – with the broken door I was unable to, so when I returned home I used some parcel tape to seal the door shut then wound it back to frame 12, then having wasted some lovely photographic opportunities that day and under obligation to finish the roll and test the film I went on a walk locally to places I’ve written about before here and which to be frank I’m quite bored of, but needs must and this was a Film review rather than a photo exhibition so I did what I had to do, forgive me if the photos are mundane and boring – even Mrs Ibbs looks bored.

The Minolta did well and I used a commercial High Street lab to get the negatives and their scans. (I hardly ever use Colour Negative Film and my scanning ability is non existent with it, so it made sense them to dev and scan).

I then looked at my results on LR 6. As expected, being an ISO 400 Film the shots were grainy but sharp and with decent definition.

The colours are muted, and display a greenish/blueish colour cast which gives them a ‘retro’ look. In fact it reminds me of a grainier and colder less punchier Agfa RSX II

The Film has low contrast and good latitude. It holds highlights pretty well but whites become washed out and lack detail.

I did try and boost some of the vibrancy and saturation but apart from on the Mistley sign the other’s look garish and ugly.

Overall It’s not for blue skies and sunny Spring/Summer day photographs, but it does give a certain muted look to portraits and serves well when photographing buildings. I’m trying to figure out where and how I would use this type of film, maybe in lower light as ISO 400 probably would suit?

But to be honest it’s not for me. My favourite colour Films are all E6 – Kodak Ektachrome e100vs being my favourite and for Negative Film I love Agfa Ultra 100 (which I have 2 precious rolls of in the Freezer) I’ve never been one to shoot anything with a Special FX look such as experimental shots and creative ones using different or expired film, or X Process as on Lomography. If this is you then it’s worth giving this a try.

This film was supplied for this review by Mark Xiao, who is currently running a business/project that imports films and other photographic accessories produced by reliable Chinese companies. He currently works closely with major producers from China such as Reflx Lab, Lucky and Alienfilm, but also connected with minor artisan workshops such as 617 Club who re-spool top quality Svema films from Ukraine. He is currently working with Aperture Printing in London and expanding his cooperation sphere further. If you are interested in these films, they will be available in Aperture Printing from April 2025. If you are interested in Mark’s business as a retailer, feel free to contact him via email at [email protected]

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