NEW ORWO STOCK - TEST RESULTS

[Piotr Wołoszyk]

Having this money to spend they should have bought Fuji's Eterna department

[Joerg Polzfusz]

What did you expect?

Many of the original ORWO products didn’t have a label at all. And also other companies are using such cheap labels - see attached photo.

They wanted to use the brandname „ORWO“, but aren’t allowed to do so. Instead of waiting for the decision whether to put Wolfen, Filmotec, InnovisCoat, Jake Seal or whatever onto the label, someone simply created some stickers and finally shipped the stuff.

The involved companies are still in the state of insolvency. So they‘ve got better things to do than paying for some useless stickers.

[Uli Meyer]

8 minutes ago, Joerg Polzfusz said:

So they‘ve got better things to do than paying for some useless stickers.

Yet the image you share as an example shows a printed box. The cans I received came in no box, nothing, just cans with homemade labels. Don't get me wrong, if the product inside is excellent, I don't care. But it took nearly two and a half months to arrive and this doesn't install much confidence. I'm sure you can see the point. Still, looking forward to testing the material.

[Aapo Lettinen]

8 hours ago, Uli Meyer said:

Yet the image you share as an example shows a printed box. The cans I received came in no box, nothing, just cans with homemade labels. Don't get me wrong, if the product inside is excellent, I don't care. But it took nearly two and a half months to arrive and this doesn't install much confidence. I'm sure you can see the point. Still, looking forward to testing the material.

what is in da cans, is it real film as expected? 

if it exposes correctly and the image is ok, then it would matter less where it ships from. though shipping from all over the place would indicate that there is mini batches all around Europe which might indicate less than ideal storage conditions. who knows ?  but it seems that there is at least SOMETHING inside the cans, people would had noticed if they were empty

[Tyler Purcell]

They have arrived! 

Let the testing commence. 

[Niels kakelveld]

A new film stock is very exciting! I dont care about the canister flare as long as they are able to keep their heads above the water. 

I love experimenting with different film stocks, I will want to try their super 8 film. 

Tye, do tell what your first impressions are, do you think the grain will look like Vision2 or something else?

Is NC500 tungsten or daylight balanced?

 

And it is C-41 right? Interesting choice.

[Heikki Repo]

Here's the ORWO's official stock comparison video that was linked here (from Instagram) a couple of weeks ago. Please note that the very first and last comparison stocks are Kodak color 250D in 35mm and 16mm:

 

[Mark Eastman]

Given that the production and printing of full color branded labels can be quite costly, it's understood if labeling may appear crude. It's the film quality that counts though, no matter how it's packaged. I look forward to trying this new film.

Mark

Mark Eastman
Palo Alto, CA

(Completely unrelated to Eastman Kodak)

Edited February 1, 2023 by Mark Eastman

[Tyler Purcell]

I will be making a longer post about this, but we finally got our first test back of NC500 and we weren't that impressed. 

We made a lot of mistakes in our shoot, (that will be discussed in another post) we had very little time due to a storm system moving through and I wanted to get something out fast. We have plenty of stock, so we will be doing another test soon. We also made some mistakes in the scan. We obviously scan lots of Kodak film, so we started with the base Kodak settings, which of course didn't work. So we had to adjust the scanner as we went, which led to inconsistencies between scenes. However, we did notice the lack of dynamic range in the film itself, no matter what setting we used on our scanner. So that in of itself says, we aren't far off on the scan. 

The film itself is poorly manufactured, the width varies, the perfs vary, the image "pulses" and every frame from start to finish had dirt on it. For sure not something I'd use for any serious project. 

We made two videos about this. Here is our first one. Please check for the full thread. 

 

[Uli Meyer]

Blimey, it's very grainy too. Thanks for sharing your test, Tyler.

[Piotr Wołoszyk]

Not being told what is this, I'd say it's poorly developed  '60 home made 8 mm movie. 

Tyler, would you try C41?

[Jon O'Brien]

The look kind of reminds of a very grainy, bleak looking old projection print of some old movie. But, it's interesting. Would work where you want a very obvious film look. Maybe over time they can improve this.

[David Sekanina]

Thank you Tyler for the tests ?

[Craig Lindley]

Thanks Tyler, very useful !

I find the look quite interesting. But this is from someone who develops film in daylight tanks and coffee jars ?.

The mechanical issues are a concern. It will be interesting to see if and how these have an impact when the stock is used with different types of cameras.

[Aapo Lettinen]

one thing which came into mind... is it possible that it is a lower sensitivity stills stock emulsion and just sensitized a bit to get to the higher base ISO? I already mentioned on the other thread that it looks like expired amateur stills film but the look kinda resembles push processed medium speed film, not Fuji but a bit similar style.

maybe taking some 100 to 200 ISO Agfa amateur stock emulsion, cooking up with chemicals to get to the about 400 ISO and then coating and selling as a "completely new film formula" ? because the dynamic range and grain structure does not look like any kind of normal stock to me and something is definitely going on. Assuming that the development was done correctly of course.

As a side note, I shot some documentary stuff years ago on 16mm which was supposed to look more like Super8 than 16mm. I shot with a N16 Bolex, underexposed the 7219 quite a bit and then push processed it by 2 stops. The grain levels and shadow latitude resembled these Orwo tests pretty well which is why I remembered it so clearly

[Tyler Purcell]

10 hours ago, Uli Meyer said:

Blimey, it's very grainy too. Thanks for sharing your test, Tyler.

It's 500T on Super 8 grainy! EEK! 

[Tyler Purcell]

8 hours ago, Piotr Wołoszyk said:

Not being told what is this, I'd say it's poorly developed  '60 home made 8 mm movie. 

Tyler, would you try C41?

It 100% looks like bad processing. But sadly, I think it's bad stock as it was processed at Fotokem the top lab in the country. 

I would love to have someone process a batch in C41, I can't do that stuff sadly. 

 

[Heikki Repo]

German test C41 processed results by Sebastian Bock here:

https://www.filmvorfuehrer.de/topic/37472-orwo-nc500-erster-eindruck/

Edited February 1, 2023 by Heikki Repo

[Tyler Purcell]

6 minutes ago, Heikki Repo said:

German test C41 processed results by Sebastian Bock here:

https://www.filmvorfuehrer.de/topic/37472-orwo-nc500-erster-eindruck/

Interesting, I will examine this in more detail later, thanks for sharing. 

[Uli Meyer]

4 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Interesting, I will examine this in more detail later, thanks for sharing. 

They also complain about the grain and one of them wonders if there may be less grain if developed with ECN2. A link to this forum follows which answers that question.

[Giray Izcan]

900 for 1000ft sounds like money well spent to me then haha

[Heikki Repo]

For those who are wondering where this film originates from, Henning Serger gives a thorough look at the complex network of different small entities working now together to make color film under the roof of Seal 1818:

https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/orwo-colour-film-teaser.192156/page-8#post-2626317

[David Jean Schweitzer, SOC]

Please follow this link to view the comprehensive NC400, NC500 as compared to Eastman Kodak 5219 that was shot on March 1st, 2023. https://vimeo.com/820380873

We used two Aaton Penelopes in a side-by-side  setup with matching prime lenses. We made two passes, each with the NC stocks in the A camera and Kodak 5219 500T in the B camera. The exposed material was developed and scanned at Colorlab on a DFT Scanty at 4.3K for a 1 to 1 representation on 4K DCI. In addition the material reviewed on ARRI Scanner Company 3 by Thomas Kuo.

The team exposed the stocks at their respective box speed. 

The first thing we wanted to find out is the film stocks' speed. The factory rates the two film stocks at ISO 400. We implemented the standard two stops under to 2 stops over wedge test in 1/2 stop increments. 

 

We concluded that the NC400 emulsion looked closer to "normal" at one stop over or N+1, that being ISO 200. At the same time, the NC500 appears to have a slightly less normal density at close to the factory box speed of ISO 400. In conclusion, NC500 appears to have an ISO of 320. I recommend exposing it at ISO 250.

Test Credits:
Dwight D. Campbell - Master Gaffer
Donald Burghardt - Master 1st AC
Dan Venti - Master 1st AC
David Auner, AAC - Cinematographer
Gustavo Perez - Electrician
Hanako Ohashi - Coordinator
David Jean Schweitzer, SOC - Cinematographer, Project Leader

CURVES-comparative.jp2

Edited May 23, 2023 by David Jean Schweitzer, SOC

[Giray Izcan]

The stock doesn't look that awesome to be honest. Great test though.

[Ludwig Hagelstein]

On 5/23/2023 at 8:34 PM, David Jean Schweitzer, SOC said:

Please follow this link to view the comprehensive NC400, NC500 as compared to Eastman Kodak 5219 that was shot on March 1st, 2023. https://vimeo.com/820380873

We used two Aaton Penelopes in a side-by-side  setup with matching prime lenses. We made two passes, each with the NC stocks in the A camera and Kodak 5219 500T in the B camera. The exposed material was developed and scanned at Colorlab on a DFT Scanty at 4.3K for a 1 to 1 representation on 4K DCI. In addition the material reviewed on ARRI Scanner Company 3 by Thomas Kuo.

The team exposed the stocks at their respective box speed. 

The first thing we wanted to find out is the film stocks' speed. The factory rates the two film stocks at ISO 400. We implemented the standard two stops under to 2 stops over wedge test in 1/2 stop increments. 

 

We concluded that the NC400 emulsion looked closer to "normal" at one stop over or N+1, that being ISO 200. At the same time, the NC500 appears to have a slightly less normal density at close to the factory box speed of ISO 400. In conclusion, NC500 appears to have an ISO of 320. I recommend exposing it at ISO 250.

Test Credits:
Dwight D. Campbell - Master Gaffer
Donald Burghardt - Master 1st AC
Dan Venti - Master 1st AC
David Auner, AAC - Cinematographer
Gustavo Perez - Electrician
Hanako Ohashi - Coordinator
David Jean Schweitzer, SOC - Cinematographer, Project Leader

CURVES-comparative.jp2 43.71 kB · 3 downloads

Great test. How did you perceive perf stability?