ORWO NC500 and NC400 Film Review - Early 2023

[@Cleohel]

Dude, nice Video. Keep going, would like to watch more!

[@ryanbhangdia]

Thanks Julian! Some big stuff in the works, coming soon!

[@bhangdiajake7490]

Great video!! excited to see whats next!

[@ryanbhangdia]

thanks Jake!

[@jamesjuranke]

Thanks for sharing! I just got a few rolls myself. Thanks for the making these! Liked and Subscribed! :)

[@jpjast5739]

Interesting. Would be nice to hear more about the iso used (did you push and see different results?) and the cameras used. Well done. Am interested in this film.

[@ryanbhangdia]

Thanks jp, I shot all four rolls at iso 400, but the first two were in very bright outdoor light (like EV17/18), and were more likely to be overexposed I think. The cameras were my Leica M3 (repainted red) and black Nikon FM3a. Definitely planning to do a video on the M3 soon as well as the Fujinon speed trio of LTM lenses I’ve got for it!

[@gregsmith6373]

Great video, thank you! I got 4 rolls of ORWO NC500 and didnt try them yet. After watching all revies Im a bit scaptical to that film. Ive got few rolls of ORWO expired in 90ties. Maybe Ill try both fresh and expired at the same time to see if there will be any visible difrence between them :) Cheers from Poland

[@ryanbhangdia]

Cheers Greg, glad you got some value from it! Yes I’m not 100% sold on this iteration of their color film but I’m hopeful that they can refine some more. Like I mentioned on the video, I do love their black and white stock

[@Nedumgottil]

Ordered a few rolls after watching this

[@ryanbhangdia]

nice, I hope you have some fun shooting them and I'd love to hear what you think of it!

[@mvonwalter6927]

I love their BW film. I've got wonderful 8x10 prints from the 100 speed cine film.

[@ryanbhangdia]

Agreed, I love the grain especially in rodinal, it’s present but not distracting and is a nice texture

[@mvonwalter6927]

@@ryanbhangdia I've devved it in D96 and Xtol. I have a bottle of Rodinal. I'll have to give that a try.

[@doozledumbler5393]

Would you recommend shooting at 800iso and then pushing in dev?

[@ryanbhangdia]

Great question, I personally have not tried that yet and have not seen examples but while that may boost the contrast I worry about the shadows blocking and and the highlights being blown out given my results with relatively little latitude - if you get the chance to try it I’d love to hear how it goes!

[@SiggyPony]

Really nice video especially covering the history as well. I gave up waiting for my order and purchased from a US store and got my first rolls about a month ago. Just found out my originaly order of 6 rolls got shipped by Orwo yesterday :) I shot mine on a EOS 1, first roll at 400 and then when I was less then happy with the greens the second roll at 200ISO. Both came out ok but I liked the 200ISO the best. It's an interesting observation though with the data sheet, I should shot another roll at 400 with a focus on greens so I can compare better :)

[@ryanbhangdia]

Glad your original rolls finally shipped! Yeah I think the lighting scenario itself may play a big role in the results - like you might be pretty OK at EI200 if it isn’t too contrasty, but like with anything film: you’ve just got to do what gets you the results you like! Do you scan it yourself or are you working with lab scans?

[@SiggyPony]

@@ryanbhangdia I'm developing myself with Cinestill Cs41 and scanning with a EOS 5D mkiii. It might be an idea to get a single roll developed at a lab to see what difference it makes 🙂. Last Saturday I did 2 *120 and 4 35mm rolls, it takes a long time doesnt it 😅

[@ryanbhangdia]

@@SiggyPony nice, I'm not sure how much a difference lab dev would make - I think the scanning process has a greater impact on the results with these films than development because c41 is a pretty forgiving process, but that's just my experience haha. I found that messing with the conversion in negative lab pro had the greatest impact on my final results.

[@lahuk1194]

Its an interesting film, its like the colours are washed out, except for 1 thats vivid, seems to be usually red, orange or blue. It is odd they have both the NC400 and NC500 if they're so similar, if not the same. Seems like it'd be more work for ORWO, and if they've had trouble already its a pretty strange choice.

[@ryanbhangdia]

agreed, it is an interesting film - on their website they have slightly different descriptions for each but I think (again, total speculation) since both are listed as "limited edition" that they might be different iterations of the same thing. It's hard to run small batches and make small tweaks the chemistry so they likely had to do a production run of a decent size and maybe NC400 is the second run with some minor modifications. I felt like NC400 was a bit more consistent and had better results but we will see!

[@lahuk1194]

@@ryanbhangdia Perhaps thats the case, plus considering the NC400 came out of nowhere too. If the NC400 is more consistant, I might give that 1 a go over the 500.

[@tomjanowski8584]

Orwo NC500 may be the worst film I have ever used. Blue skies were "muddy" with dark grain. Purple rendered as brown. I shot a various film speeds and there weren't any results that were better or worse. Horrible film. Would never use again.

[@ryanbhangdia]

Sorry to hear about your bad experience Tom, and I appreciate you sharing it. Can I ask how your film was scanned? I've heard some stories about people getting bad results from lab scanners that are not appropriately calibrated for the different base-color of this film; the negatives as I'm sure you saw look pretty different from from the classic orange-ey tone of Kodak films for instance. I camera scan mine and set the white balance off the film border and found that helped for me but I don't blame you not wanting to use it again and I'm not so sure I will be either... at least this iteration..