KONO Color 200/OptiColour 200/ORWO NC200 Film Review

KONO Color 200 is a new colour-negative film packaged and sold by a German company, KONO Manufaktur, in 35mm and bulk rolls of 100’ (30.5m).

I’ve shot three rolls of it this summer in various settings and have lots to say about the quality of the images, the price, and what this film means for the future of film photography.

This review has a higher-than-average number of samples from the rolls, as I was lucky enough to get lots of “keepers.” Or it may have been the result of a massive upgrade in terms of image quality and scannability for InovisCoat GmbH (I will explain who that is below).

In this review: What is KONO Color 200? Colours. Contrast & dynamic range. Grain, resolution, sharpness. Scanning. Exposure and editing tips. Can this work as an everyday ISO 200 colour-negative film? Why this film matters. How much does this film cost? Where to buy. Support this blog & get premium features with GOLD memberships!

Thank you, Lily Li Hua (Instagram: @lilianlihua), for modelling!

What is KONO Color 200?

KONO Color 200 is very different from anything else currently out in the market.

You can immediately identify it in high-res scans as warm, medium-contrast, and grainy. It may be the grainiest ISO 200 colour film — but it has a few things going for it that not even Kodak can offer.

More so, before you load KONO Color 200 into your camera, you’ll notice a characteristically blush-pink leader with a light orange underside sticking out of a 35mm film canister. OptiColour 200 has the same unique leader colour and similar image characteristics.

Optik Oldschool openly states that — “OptiColour 200 is the Wolfen NC200” — which must mean that OptiColour 200, KONO Color 200, and ORWO Wolfen NC200 are the same film.

Out of the above three companies, ORWO, also known as InovisCoat GmbH (link to a brief history of ORWO), is the factory that makes the film.

KONO packages ORWO film into recycled Kodak film canisters with exposed DX-code (selected for matching ISO 200, which is great for point-and-shoot cameras) and offers a bulk price option. Optik Oldschool is the exclusive distributor of a medium format version of this film, OptiColor 200. All three businesses operate out of Germany (where film photography is recognized as cultural heritage).

The Wolfen NC200 is the first ISO 200 colour-negative film to come from ORWO/InvisCoat, but it’s not the first colour-negative film out of this German factory. ORWO Wolfen NC 500/400 colour-negative films (also sold as Ilfocolor 400), which share similarities with Lomography Lomochrome Color’92 and Lomography Lomochrome Metropolis, are among the first newly formulated colour-negative films brought to market in decades following the collapse of the formerly dominant analogue photography industry.

Notably, ORWO Wolfen NC200 isn’t yet sold on the ORWO website. KONO and Optik Oldschool are actually distributing a pre-production run of this film, which has two issues: small rainbow dots on some of the frames and a weak anti-halation layer.

Colours.

The issue with the (earlier) ISO 400 ORWO-made colour-negative films that most reviews point to is dull colour. The new ISO 200 film from the ORWO factory solves it completely.

The overall saturation I got from my three rolls of KONO Color 200 fell well within expectations and maybe even a little beyond.

KONO Color 200/OptiColour 200/Wolfen NC200 still doesn’t appear as colour-accurate as Kodak’s mid-range Gold and ColorPlus options, and certainly not the Portras. However, the warm, flattering colours of this new film may actually make a better fit for a dreamy look. Especially when slightly overexposed, which lowers the film’s contrast.

Not only is this film warm, but it also renders visible halations around specular highlights, adding to the yellow, red, and brown colour dominance. This is new for ORWO-made emulsions. (Remember that this is a pre-production property that the later batches likely will not exhibit.)

Halations have been a hallmark of the CineStill films, which had the remjet removed deliberately, yielding the recognizable blobs of red light around exceptionally bright areas. While the appeal of this effect is not universal, it has many admirers, whom this new ORWO-made film may satisfy.

Thankfully, for those who don’t love the look, the halation effect is very mild and is only visible when exceptionally bright spots of light appear on film, like glaring reflections.

Another area where this film has shown significant improvements over the NC 500/400 ORWO films is colour fidelity — particularly when it comes to the colour green.

The earlier ISO 400 ORWO films rendered greens in a compressed tone, yielding the same hue for trees, grass, and objects that looked flat. The new NC200 film can draw a respectable variety of hues that add to this new film’s appeal and realism.

Overall, I’m very happy with how my rolls of KONO Color 200 worked out in my scans. While this film may not be as accurate at representing reality as any of the Kodak films currently on offer, it has a distinct, warm, and often flattering look, realistic enough to cross the experimental boundary into an everyday stock category.

If you are considering shooting this film on a daily basis, ensure that you’re fine with this its tendency to show chunky red and green grain in the shadows and a slight (but easily correctable) green cast in certain scans.

Contrast & dynamic range.

You’d think that a film that renders this much saturation straight from the scanner (and in the darkroom) would be a high-contrast emulsion — but that is not the case.

ORWO NC200/KONO Color 200 is a medium-low contrast film, which becomes low-contrast when overexposed.

This can be helpful for preserving extra information in the highlights, where there is a lot of room for edits after scanning. You can increase the contrast, correct the colours, and give the results a little more punch after the fact.

However, I would try to avoid underexposing this film as the shadows can appear noisy with extra-chunky grain.

Unfortunately, there are no datasheets or characteristic curves available for this film, so I can’t give you a dynamic range estimate. However, I can say that this is an easy film to shoot; it can work well in high-contrast and medium-contrast light and handle a decent range of exposures without losing significant detail.

Grain, resolution, sharpness.

As is the case with most photographic films, KONO Color 200 renders a variety of grain sizes — smaller in the highlights and chunkier in the shadows.

Overall, the grain is noticeable across the frame. The shadows don’t appear “clean” as they would on some other grainy film stocks, such as Kodak Portra 800 and Kodak Vision 3 500T/CineStill 800T. There’s considerable noise, mostly made of red and blue dots.

Noisy shadows can work well for some shots — I like the results in the frame above — but they can also impact resolution significantly and distract the viewer from the image (although that may also be desirable in some cases).

Reducing shadows with additional exposure and scene selection will reduce the grain and lower the contrast.

Scanning.

KONO Color 200 came out of my C-41 tank looking dark blue, similar to NC 500 and Harman Phoenix 200, but it dried to look greenish-brown.

Some film inversion software will produce better results with colour masks that aren’t blue. I used my Nikon SUPER COOLSCAN 5000ED with VueScan to create digital negatives (scanned as a positive with all adjustments set to neutral or turned off). film Q inverted the negatives for me using histogram stretching for consistent, predictable results.

Most photos in this article didn’t need any adjustments at all. Some images lacked contrast, which wasn’t difficult to bump in Photoshop.

Your results may vary slightly depending on how you scan your film, although most samples I’ve seen online all share the same texture and a warm, medium-contrast colour palette you see here. If you notice a significant colour shift in your scans, try inverting manually.

Exposure and editing tips.

I liked what I saw most when I shot high-key, slightly overexposed, high-contrast scenes, sometimes with additional contrast gain after scanning.

Avoiding shadows and adding exposure in-camera reduces the noise significantly. If you want that and you’re exposing manually, try adding 1-1.5 stops to your camera settings when photographing (i.e., rate this film as an ISO 80 or ISO 100). Point and shoot users: try to center and prefocus your camera on shadows and recompose if possible/needed.

Overexposed Kono Color 200/ORWO NC200 will typically render images in lower contrast and with a slight green cast. This can be corrected with a contrast slider or a Curves tool in any image editor of your choice.

Scenes with direct sunlight or with a strong light source seem to work best with this film if you want to see richer colours and less grain. This film can handle slight overexposure rather well, but keep in mind the halations on the preproduction run that can show up in particularly bright areas as red blobs or across large bright surfaces as a mild pink hue.

Can this work as an everyday ISO 200 colour-negative film?

I think that Kono Color 200/ORWO NC200/OptiColour 200 is the first colour-negative film made today that isn’t Kodak, which I would be comfortable using every day.

It’s not perfect, but it renders realistic greens, decent skin tones, flattering warm colours, and isn’t hard to expose well. This film is easy to develop and scan; it can accept edits and keeps a good amount of detail in the highlights and in overexposed shots.

It’s grainier than Kodak colour films, yet still a comparable alternative to something like Kodak Gold or Kodak ColorPlus.

If, like me, you like to shoot a lot of film, Kono Color 200 is available in bulk rolls, which would make the process cheaper and use less waste, thanks to recycled containers.

Why this film matters.

The ORWO factory is the only facility other than Kodak and Harman that makes colour-negative film today (if we’re to put Polaroid and Instax aside). Everything else is believed to be coming from one of the three factories, with some changes but no fundamental differences.

However, if you’re looking for an everyday film stock, which I define as something that’s relatively easy to get good results with in most situations, Harman Phoenix is not (yet) it, making KONO Color 200/ORWO NC200 the only serious competitor to Kodak’s unstable monopoly on high-quality colour film.

How much does this film cost?

I found stores in the US that sell 35mm canisters of KONO Color 200 for $11.90 and bulk rolls of 100’ for $189.00 (which amounts to about $9.95/roll). On their respective websites, KONO and Optik Oldschool sell them for about the same, depending on how you convert your currency and shipping/taxes.

Given that the average price of a single 35mm/36exp. colour film roll today is $18.83, KONO Color 200/ORWO NC200 is refreshingly affordable.

Where to buy.

Please check your local shop or follow the links below to help support this blog with your purchase:

❤ Please consider making your KONO Color 200 (ORWO Wolfen NC200) film purchase using this link  so that this website may get a small percentage of that sale — at no extra charge for you — thanks!

In celebration of this year’s World Photography Day, I’ve published three long-form reads that examine the lucrative and versatile category of affordable ISO 200 colour-negative films.

You’ve just read the second one in the series.

Up next: “Comparing Two Newest Colour Films: Phoenix vs. NC200.”

Previously: “Fujifilm 200 Color Negative vs. Kodak Gold.”