Wolfen NP100

Wolfen NP100 is ORWO's motion picture stock UN54+ with an anti-halation layer added between the polyester base and the emulsion. Without that layer you get bright spots around point light sources because the polyester is clear enough to reflect light back through the emulsion. With it added, sharpness improves and the film starts to behave like a still-photography negative. ORWO has been coating film at Bitterfeld-Wolfen since 1910, and this is one of the first new B&W stills products to come out of that factory in years.

The grain is traditional cubic, not tabular. That is the character. Compared to T-Max 100 or Delta 100 the grain reads visibly textured at 35mm, closer to Fomapan 100 or older HP4-era stocks. Contrast runs higher than Fomapan, which some reviewers have flagged as a limitation in scenes with deep shadow and bright sky together. Rate it at 80 in contrasty light if you want the shadows to hold.

The official developer is D-96, which is the motion picture chemistry the parent stock was designed for. D-76 substitutes cleanly: stock dilution at 5:30 minutes at 20C gives you a normal contrast negative. ID-11 behaves the same way. Rodinal works too but pushes the grain further, which may or may not be what you are after.

The polyester base is worth noting. It lies completely flat for scanning, unlike acetate which can cup or curl. For workflows that depend on consistent scanner focus across a roll, this matters. The trade is that polyester is harder to break loose if a roll ever jams.

Available in 35mm only at present, packaged in DX-coded steel canisters. No 120 or sheet sizes. Production has run in limited batches since the relaunch.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.31, the conventional silver-grain baseline. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second: a 30-second meter reading climbs to about 90 seconds at the negative. For indoor available-light work or stopped-down architectural shots, that threshold comes up regularly.