ORWO Wolfen NC500 – From Ugly Duckling to Problem Child With Charm

I had basically written this film off.
Then Kodak Ultramax 400 came in and saved it.

The ORWO Wolfen NC500 really didn’t have an easy start with me. You can now find it sitting in the film rack of a big German drugstore chain. And in my naïve little brain, I thought: “Well, if they sell it, they’ll probably know how to handle it.”

Yeah… reality was already standing next to me, shovel in hand.

On two rolls of NC500 the development took forever. And when I finally picked them up, the envelope had a black-and-yellow striped warning sticker—which basically means 6 € extra. Inside was a sheet with a neat little checkmark next to:

“Not a standard roll.”

Amazing. I buy a film in the store, hand it in at the same counter, and end up getting what feels like a parking ticket.
Alright, once is nothing. Could happen.

But twice?

The Ultramax Disaster #

As if that wasn’t enough, one of my Kodak Ultramax 400 rolls—dropped off at the same time—also got punished.
The digital scans looked like someone had tried to solve a Rubik’s Cube by rearranging pixels. “Psychedelic” would be polite.

That was the breaking point. If I can’t tell whether the film is messing up, the lab is messing up, or both—then I’ll just scan the negatives myself.

“One of the lab’s legendary ‘psychedelic scans’. They were supposed to be cows — instead I got a chemical fever dream. At that point I honestly wasn’t sure whether the film was broken, or the scanner operator.”

Darktable, Negadoctor, and the First Aha Moment #

I’m currently not using Lightroom but Darktable on Linux. Which meant I had to properly wrap my head around the Negadoctor module. And very quickly it became clear how critical it is to correctly measure the film base color. If that’s off, everything is off.

During a follow-up discussion with my coworkers—my harshest critics when it comes to color casts and contrast—it suddenly happened.
klick klick BOOM.

Another shovel. This time the shovel of realization.

Maybe the film wasn’t the problem.
Maybe it was simply being handled completely wrong.

“A fogged-up window, blending reflections, shadows and a lone glowing light inside. Exactly the kind of scene where the NC500 shows its quiet, moody character.”

The Lab Profile Problem #

Drugstore labs scan basically everything using a standard profile for orange film base—optimized for Kodak Gold 200 and Ultramax 400.
But the ORWO NC500 has a completely different, much more neutral film base.

Scanning it with a Kodak profile gives you… well, a bad knockoff Kodak.

That explains the washed-out colors, muddy shadows, weird cyan tint.

So I scanned a few strips myself and processed them in Darktable.

And suddenly:
the ugly duckling started turning into a swan.

“Left: the lab scan — flat, cyan-shifted, lifeless. Right: my own scan, with proper contrast, cleaner color and finally the look this film is capable of. This was the moment the NC500 started to make sense.”

The Look — and Why I Now Actually Like It #

My own scans were night-and-day compared to the lab versions.
Not perfect—but full of character. And that’s exactly the point.

The ORWO NC500 has a look that is:

slightly muted, but not lifeless
cool-toned, without looking sterile
quick to crush the shadows
far less kitschy than Kodak Gold 200 or Ultramax 400
subtly cinematic, without trying too hard

The crushed shadows don’t bother me at all.
That’s how I often shoot digital anyway: expose for the highlights, let the shadows fall where they may.

No idea whether the Pentax ME Super meters in a similar way, whether film just has a blessed dynamic range, or if I’ve simply been lucky—but very few negatives have been truly misexposed so far.

The Unexpected Turning Point #

As I kept scanning and processing, the film suddenly started to make sense.
Not a Kodak challenger, not a Portra clone, not a hype-film.

A character piece.

One that doesn’t try to please everyone.
One that’s a bit odd.
One that doesn’t care whether your Instagram grid looks consistent.

And that’s exactly what I like about it.

“Left: the lab scan — cool, flat and oddly tinted. Right: my own scan: warmer, cleaner and far more natural. This is the look the NC500 was meant to have — I just had to coax it out myself.”

Conclusion: The ORWO Gets a Second Chance #

The ORWO NC500 was one step away from the mental trash bin.
It was the kind of film where, after two rolls, you’d normally say:
“Nope. Never again.”

But with my own scans, a bit of patience, and the realization that drugstore labs really don’t adapt to unusual emulsions, the film earned its redemption arc.

It’s not perfect.
It’s not universal.
And it certainly doesn’t make things easy.

But that imperfect, gritty, slightly stubborn character turns it into a film you can use very deliberately as a stylistic choice.

The ORWO gets its second chance—and somehow managed to carve out a small place in my heart.

“A quiet ending: weathered trailers, patina, wild overgrowth. This is where the NC500 feels at home — in the imperfect, the rough, the quietly honest.”

Disclaimer #

This article was written while Rage Against the Machine was spinning on the turntable.
Some might call it an ode to analog photography.
Others might call it a midlife crisis with film grain.

Me?
I’m loving it. 😎