ORWO · ISO 80 B&W negative
ORWO NP20
ORWO stands for Original Wolfen. The factory in Bitterfeld-Wolfen was the original Agfa coating plant before World War Two, then ended up on the East German side of the iron curtain after partition. It continued making film and developers as VEB Filmfabrik Wolfen through the Cold War. NP20 was their portrait-oriented panchromatic emulsion at DIN 20, which converts to ISO 80. Production ended with the Treuhand-led liquidation that closed the factory in 1994.
The emulsion was a cubic-grain panchromatic stock engineered for skin rendering, not landscape detail. The grain reads soft and round in 35mm enlargements, with a forgiving mid-tone that flatters faces without compressing highlights the way a press-oriented film would. Sharpness is fine. The character sits closer to Adox CHS 100 II than to FP4+ or T-MAX 100, which gives you the right reference if you have shot any contemporary classic-process B&W.
ORWO published the stock with a balanced tonal scale and conservative speed rating; many photographers shot it at EI 64 to thicken the negative further. Develop in Rodinal 1:50 for around ten minutes for slightly punchier results, or in ID-11 stock for smoother portrait gradation. The Wolfen factory's own R09 developer, sold under the Calbe label in the GDR, was what most original-era shooters used.
The Wolfen plant continued under FilmoTec GmbH, founded in 1998, which was brought under common ownership with film coater InovisCoat GmbH under Seal 1818 GmbH in 2020. ORWO Net GmbH separately holds the ORWO trademark, which now produces Wolfen NP100 and other modern emulsions in the same plant. NP20 itself has not been reissued. What you find for sale today is original Cold War stock from the seventies and eighties, decades past expiration. Cold-stored rolls behave close to ISO 32 or 40 with a slight base fog increase. Bracket conservatively.
Reciprocity exponent is 1.31. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. A metered 30-second exposure becomes about 90 seconds at the negative. Available historically in 35mm cassettes and 120 rolls, with some sheet film distributed in 6.5x9cm and 9x12cm sizes for European folding plate cameras.
How the app handles this stock
- Box speed: ISO 80. Picker exposes pull/push chips so you can shoot it at any speed you want and the meter follows.
- Reciprocity: Above one second the app raises metered time to the power of 1.31.
- Expired film: if you load an old roll, set the expiry year and storage in the app and the ISO scales for you. B&W negative decay rates are baked in.