Dangerously Low ISO - Orwo Wolfen DN21 & DP31

When shooting digital, I got used to shooting at ISOs that our grandfathers would have found inconceivable. Even on DSLRs a couple generations back, I’d shoot at shoot at 8000 or 16000 ISO without much thought. The pictures would come out fine, and I never did much shooting with a shutter speed slower than 1/250.

When I started shooting B&W film, I still had some old habits - I’d feel pretty compelled to shoot Kentmere 100 and 400 pushed two or three stops. Kentmere is an incredible film and this likewise never really gave me any problems.

However - I started running into some challenges. I’d run out of shutter speed on my old cameras. Most of them top out at 1/500 or 1/1000; 1/8000 speeds of today are laughably far off.

Couple this with where I happened to live - tropical islands, with absolutely punishing direct sun. Summer sun on Okinawa in particular has a peculiarly murderous intensity. Cameras included - in this absolutely violent sun, it’s hard to shoot at anything other than 1/500 and f16 at regular ISO film, which takes away options. There are always filters - but I have a variety of old glass with obscure diameters, and on rangefinders without through-the-lens metering, dialing in correct exposure (and more importantly remembering to set the polarizer) was a bit more faffing about than I was interested in.

Enter Orwo and their line of extremely low ISO films.

You are reading that right - about $6 a roll. I seem to recall them being on sale when I bought my first box for $4.95, but I may be wrong.

I’ll discuss DN21 and DP31 - I’ve shot and developed one roll each. I would not pretend that this makes me an expert - but I feel comfortable making some observations.

Both rolls were shot in rangefinders, one in a Canon 7 and the other in a Leica M2. I used a Hedeco Lime 2 meter with both cameras, and trusted it more or less implicitly throughout.

One other downside - it comes in a plastic canister instead of the normal metal one - which in addition to being less inspiring, is of slightly larger measurements. It was almost too large to fit into my Leica M2. But I wouldn’t let this deter you. Also, Orwo is now advertising steel cassettes on their main page, so perhaps at some point they’ll upgrade. Although I’d imagine that would increase the selling price…

Shot on Canon 7, metered by a cold-shoe mounted Hedeco Lime 2. Developed in Kodak D-76, 1:3 at 70°f for 20 minutes.

I’m happy with how they turned out - they tend to be very low grain - perhaps “smooth” might be the word.

You’ll notice in a lot of these I’m pointing towards the sun - which normally would totally blow out the images - but DN21 was able to hang onto the details somehow!

I do think I underdeveloped them a bit - so when I tried the next Wolfen film I purposely went over the recommended time by a few minutes.

Final thoughts on DN21 - wonderful! Low grain, good dynamic range. Would definitely shoot again when it’s a 13 ISO kind of day.

Shot on Leica M2, metered by a cold-shoe mounted Hedeco Lime 2. Developed in Kodak D-76, 1:3 at 74°f for 11 minutes (note - substantially longer than the Massive Dev Chart recommends).

You’d think on my second go at shooting extremely low ISO film that I’d know what I was getting into…

I found myself trying to shoot this roll at twilight on fairly slow lenses… f/4 is not what we could consider fast nowadays. I was punished for my hubris with a histogram like this:

Very, very underexposed (here’s the negative as DSLR scanned):

But still slightly salvageable:

This is how cropped in that shot is (I was trying to get a stairwell in the frame, which you can’t even see in the bottom half of the photo):

But they weren’t all bad - in fact, I rather like many of them!

First, a better version of Diamond Head:

It is certainly different than DN21. Blacks are blacker (I don’t think this was just in the edit). It renders harsh bright sun pleasantly:

Even shot in fairly low light - result is not terrible:

And probably my favorite out of them all:

This is one of those times when if have two cameras, you could load one with 8 or 13 ISO film, and the other with 400 or 800, and not get caught like I did without any option but to underexpose.

I wouldn’t try to push these - as noted above, I overdeveloped the DP31 substantially (effectively pushing about 2-3 stops) but it did not save images that were underexposed.

I accept this is not really a test or a full review - it’s not as if I shot the same scene with the same exposure, let alone test charts. But what I think this shows is some practical outcomes - what do you get for about 16 cents per shot? For me, it’s well worth that price. I am pleased with the results, and I would stack them up against any of the other B&W films I shoot more frequently, as long as you have consistently strong light.

Hopefully this encourages you to give these films a shot!