NEW ORWO STOCK - TEST RESULTS

[Giray Izcan]

Even their black and white stocks seem to be over a thousand... you might as well shoot Kodak 65mm... 

[Piotr Wołoszyk]

Today's price : 749E for 400ft roll

It doubles every two days so let's take it for a joke ?

[Tyler Purcell]

1 hour ago, Piotr Wołoszyk said:

Today's price : 749E for 400ft roll

It doubles every two days so let's take it for a joke ?

HA! lol Musta been an early bird deal. Whoops. 

[Ludwig Hagelstein]

2 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

HA! lol Musta been an early bird deal. Whoops. 

I think they have some insanely stupid dynamic pricing mechanism based on stock quantity running amok in their webshop. This can't be rational. Or maybe it is because as my dad once said: "Every day three idiots are born. You just have to find them." The starting price of 187 € net / 122m / 400ft was cheap. Paying ridiculously much for a technically sub-par novelty emulsion is madness, however. As much as I respect the technical achievement of rolling out this emulsion, this will massively hurt them. And it's a punch into the faces of the folks actually making the emulsion. 

[Ludwig Hagelstein]

even after ten minutes I cant stop shaking my head. There i was telling you all "go ahead try the film, have fun - maybe all the doubters were wrong after all- a few days ago. I stand by what I said about the technical achievement of the emulsion team. But the distribution is beyond verbal description. 

[Aapo Lettinen]

I love their b/w stocks but they have poor availability at the moment and the pricing fluctuates so much that may need to abandon the idea of shooting the next short on UN54 and go with Kodak instead

[Robino Jones]

I would have bought rolls for sure - it was a nice affordable alternative to Kodak but not anymore.

[Robert Houllahan]

The 16mm on the Orwo store is $47 for a 100ft daylight spool and $185 for 400ft on a care which seems reasonable.

The 35mm is quite expensive.

[Giray Izcan]

1000ft of nc 500 is now 1916.00 dollars... hahahaha

[Robert Houllahan]

1 hour ago, Giray Izcan said:

1000ft of nc 500 is now 1916.00 dollars... hahahaha

Yeah that is intermediate stock prices a 1000ft roll of 35mm Ektachrome 100D is $1300.00 from Kodak and I thought that was a premium price.

Maybe they are just grabbing some cash for the 35mm at the rollout and maybe the price will drop later?

IDK it is allot.

Going to order some 16mm now...

[Uli Meyer]

It's odd that the 16mm price has stayed the same but the 35mm pricing tripled. Something's not right. I may try and call to see what's going on.

[Tyler Purcell]

1 hour ago, Uli Meyer said:

It's odd that the 16mm price has stayed the same but the 35mm pricing tripled. Something's not right. I may try and call to see what's going on.

Actually I got the 16mm film for $127/roll and now it's $180. So they absolutely raised the price. Maybe the demand is high? 

[Piotr Wołoszyk]

Rising price every day is not the way to make money on the product. It's rather they try to stop sells, without telling they aren't ready to put it on the market. 

I did consider a bug in their website, but it lasts for days, it's long enough to find it and fix it.

Edited December 20, 2022 by Piotr Wołoszyk

[Aapo Lettinen]

2 hours ago, Uli Meyer said:

It's odd that the 16mm price has stayed the same but the 35mm pricing tripled. Something's not right. I may try and call to see what's going on.

Are they actually delivering the rolls already or is there "unexpected shipping delays"? 

Just thinking because they behave with the pricing just like they would be manufacturing it on the fly AFTER it was paid. That would explain a lot of things...but if people have already actually received their film rolls then it would be a different matter

[Uli Meyer]

I just received an automated reply saying that they will get in touch in due course. It also says *Please note that due to staff vacations in September, response times might be longer than usual."

They apparently haven't updated their automated message. Can't find a phone number either.

[Piotr Wołoszyk]

So it's a Big Red Warning for customers. Shame.

[Heikki Repo]

When I ordered UN54 last May, there was a longer wait and I sent email, I too got a reply of out of office. I googled the name and apparently, the sales were back then run by a single person, a young guy living in the UK. Eventually he returned from his vacation, I got a reply from him and the film was delivered after a while.

So, while I do think it's not very professional to have just one guy take care of the website and sales, at least at that time 5 months ago I did receive the goods I had ordered and the price was really good.

[Pavan Deep]

I think the lack of transparency here is a huge issue and has fuelled many rumours. There have been lots of stories about increased bad practice since the new ownership and an increase lack of ‘trust’ from customers, with lots of people who have paid Orwo for new B/W film have either had to wait months to receive film or are still waiting and then there have been these huge prices increases and when you contact them there's no reply. Then there have been murmurings that this new colour stock could actually be Lucky film from China, this is very unlikely as Lucky hasn't made film for a few years, and supposedly destroyed their film coating machines and haven’t got the infrastructure to make film anymore. It’s more plausible that new film is made by InovisCoat - Filmotec, ORWO’s parent company recently merged with InovisCoat, a German film manufacturer that was created from the break-up of Agfa that produces technical and specialist films such as Metropolis for Lomography.  It seems that the new Orwo colour film certainly shares similar characteristics with Metropolis, I suppose the way to know is by getting this new film and using it comparing it Metropolis.

Pav

Edited December 20, 2022 by Pavan Deep

[Joerg Polzfusz]

The problem is that FilmoTec states that the coating will be done by InovisCoat in Monnheim on Rhein. (E.g. see https://www.orwo.wtf/about "…Film coating was contracted out to InovisCoat…").

 

But now, ORWO also states that everything is done in Wolfen: https://www.orwo.wtf "…proudly still produced in Bitterfeld-Wolfen on the original site where film manufacture has been a tradition since 1910…"

 

This cannot be true as Filmotec still cannot coat and as some tasks are done in China - see https://www.orwo.wtf/blog/an-update-on-our-wolfen-photo-films-production-packaging-and-shipping

[Giray Izcan]

10 hours ago, Robert Houllahan said:

Yeah that is intermediate stock prices a 1000ft roll of 35mm Ektachrome 100D is $1300.00 from Kodak and I thought that was a premium price.

Maybe they are just grabbing some cash for the 35mm at the rollout and maybe the price will drop later?

IDK it is allot.

Going to order some 16mm now...

I just checked their website.. it says nc500 is a color negative stock. Kodak 65mm is around 1500 lol just sayin...

[Robert Houllahan]

I ordered some 16mm print stock from Orwo and am ordering some 100ft rolls of the color.

I hope the stocks are sent in a relatively timely manor.

 

I am willing to cut Orwo some slack as I cannot think it is an easy business to run and I hope they make it as a supplier of film materials. That said it would be encouraging to see them have a person who really can take care of the communications.

[Mark Dunn]

50 minutes ago, Joerg Polzfusz said:

 

This cannot be true as Filmotec still cannot coat and as some tasks are done in China - see https://www.orwo.wtf/blog/an-update-on-our-wolfen-photo-films-production-packaging-and-shipping

That is referring to stills film and only to the finishing, which I take to mean cutting and packaging in China. But one would assume that they are slitting and perforating there as well, as I'm not sure it makes much sense to ship cut rolls when you could ship  master rolls.

 

[Joerg Polzfusz]

You might be correct. But there are other strange things on their website. E.g. they state: "…At the core of our new film lies a unique chemical formula based on the wonderful and legendary Agfa stock last used in the Oscar winning film ‘Out of Africa’. …“ (source: https://www.orwo.shop/ )

But they don’t tell how ORWO managed to get the formula from Agfa-Gevaert: InovisCoat only took over the coating devices from AgfaPhoto. And AgfaPhoto didn’t produce any cine-films. Agfa-Gevaert is still in business and never mentioned having sold any formulas. And ORWO got separated from Agfa in 1945. So, there’s no way that the statement is true - unless InovisCoat also bought some formulas from AgfaPhoto and unless AgfaPhoto‘s last still films have been accidentally based on Agfa XT 320 - without the renktet. (BTW: "Out of Africa" wasn’t even completely shot on Agfa-Gevaert’s Agfa XT 320, but also on Kodak’s Eastman 100T 5247.) Hence, it would have made more sense for me stating that their films are based on ORWO PR100 or ORWO QRS 100 (ORWO‘s last C41-still-films from the early 1990s).

Or to sum it up: It would be great if they would stop presenting  contradicting, illogical information.

(BTW: When mentioning „AgfaPhoto“, I‘m talking about the  former film-manufacturer in Leverkusen and not about Lupus Media selling Ferrania-/Fuji-/Kentmere-films under the brandname „AgfaPhoto“.)

[Jon O'Brien]

I'd be inclined to cut them a little slack too. Must be a difficult thing to do what they are trying to achieve.

I know we're talking color negative here but I used to shoot on Agfachrome Super 8 when I was a teenager and man that had a lovely look. Very different to Kodachrome. The Agfachrome really brought out the rich reds in the basalt soils where I was living and rich greens in the foliage. A grainier image but with a kind of 'fat' look if I can put it that way. It was a sort of warm and rich image that I liked.

Movies and tv shows shot on Agfa stock looked great too. Is Orwo film in any way likely to be similar to the old Agfa film?

[Robert Houllahan]

5 hours ago, Joerg Polzfusz said:

But they don’t tell how ORWO managed to get the formula from Agfa-Gevaert: InovisCoat only took over the coating devices from AgfaPhoto. And AgfaPhoto didn’t produce any cine-films. Agfa-Gevaert is still in business and never mentioned having sold any formulas. And ORWO got separated from Agfa in 1945. So, there’s no way that the statement is true - unless InovisCoat also bought some formulas from AgfaPhoto and unless AgfaPhoto‘s last still films have been accidentally based on Agfa XT 320 - without the renktet.

I honestly don't care if Orwo made a deal with ZUUL and had the formulas for the Agfa 320 smuggled out of Valhalla by Tinkerbell.

The only relevant thing is a new color film stock and there are some rolls being shot already so it appears to be real and not vapor. 

After that the only question is if they can make it consistently and at a fair price and stay in business.