Film Ferrania Orto 50 Film Review
High-Contrast and Orthochromaticism (With and Without a Green Filter)
8 min read by Dmitri.Published on .
Film Ferrania’s Orto 50 is a newly reissued (2023)¹ orthochromatic black-and-white film by the famous Italian film factory. It features fine grain, high contrast, and blue light sensitivity (which makes it blind to the red colours).
Orto 50 shares its fine grain, strong contrast, and some development times with Film Ferrania’s first product, P30 — but it’s not the same film. Here’s how the company describes it:
With its distinct orthochromatic character, high silver content, and exceptional resolving power, this film delivers striking contrast, sharpness, and sensitivity. From halftone images to charismatic portraits and breathtaking landscapes, Orto is a versatile film that pushes the boundaries of your creativity.
In this review, I am testing these claims with my Voigtländer Vitessa A, a green filter, and an extra roll of colour film for some shots to help us truly understand how this film works.
In this review: Testing Ferrania Orto 50’s orthochromatic sensitivity. Shooting orthochromatic film with a green filter. Grain, resolution, sharpness. Dynamic range. Developing and scanning Film Ferrania Orto 50. How much does Film Ferrania Orto 50, and where to buy it. Support this blog & get premium features with GOLD memberships!
¹ — Film Ferrania, in its current form, is a new business that restarted film production in 2014 using the salvaged factory and equipment from the defunct Ferrania facility. All the films currently in production are based on the original Ferrania formulas, including the Orto 50.
Testing Ferrania Orto 50’s orthochromatic sensitivity.
Orthochromatic film is sensitive to blue and green light — but not red. This was the first and only type of film in production until panchromatic film, which is sensitive to all visible wavelengths, became available in the early 1900s.
When I reviewed Ilford Ortho 80 and Agfa Ortho 25 orthochromatic films, I felt that their unique light sensitivity characteristics were plain to see. However, my recent study based on 573 film photographers’ attempts to guess black-and-white films made me realize that the orthochromatic nature of those films may not be that obvious. So I made a few side-by-side exposures for this review to demonstrate Ferrania Orto 50’s effects.
The scene above features all the primary colours, which is great for this little experiment. I shot the reference colour film (Kodak Vision 3 250D) in my Minolta X-700 with the Minolta MD Zoom 35-70mm lens that I set to the same focal length as my 50mm Ultron 2.0 I used with Orto.
The 250D is very contrasty when developed in C-41, which can make the shadows quickly disappear, though the shadows on Orto turned significantly darker!
Orto can render extreme contrast, yet that alone does not explain how certain elements disappear from view on this black-and-white film. Note the red fire hydrant (bottom left) that’s completely gone, the fact that MINI’s tail lights are now black, and the red Tesla appearing just as dark as the black-paint cars. This is the orthochromatic film’s lack of sensitivity to the red light on display.
Shooting orthochromatic film with a green filter.
When used with panchromatic black-and-white film, a green filter boosts the green colours and mutes the reds. It was another stunning fall season here in Vancouver when I tested Orto 50, so I wanted to see if that would give my scenes more definition and enhance the orthochromatic effect.
The rightmost frame of the above triptych shows that the green filter does indeed make the greenery brighter (notice the trees and the green lamppost). It even helped me accent the contrast between the red and green leaves on the middle tree, giving the scene a bit more dimensionality. But, of course, the reds could not get any darker as Orto is already “blind” to that wavelength.
In scenes with lots of green foliage, a green filter feels like a great choice as it seems to give more “life” to the images:
However, the green filter’s effects are not always obvious and shooting with it requires rating the already slow Orto 50 at EI ~25. Thus, it may not be appropriate for every occasion.
Grain, resolution, sharpness.
Like the P30, Orto 50 is a high-resolution film with a very fine grain. A good scan and a large display can reveal some granularity, but even if it’s visible, the details remain intact. This makes Orto 50 an excellent choice if you want to print something large.
Being an ISO 50 film, however, it will often demand that you use the largest aperture on your lens — especially with a green filter — this can affect your lens’ ability to take advantage of this Orto 50’s excellent resolution. (Most lenses produce the sharpest image when they are closed down a stop or two, which is the case with the fifty-year-old Voigtländer Ultron 2.0 I used here).
As you can see in the sample below, the enlargement shows a minor loss of definition as I could not use a small enough aperture to capture the action:
I love my Ultron lens. It’s not the sharpest lens I’ve owned, and it has other imperfections, but the way it combines those aberrations into images speaks to me.
This high-resolution, high-contrast film works very well with Ultron: Orto highlights all the special qualities of the glass and renders them in great detail.
Dynamic range.
One of the most common complaints I encountered with this film is its narrow dynamic range or extreme contrast. Indeed, this can be a tough film to expose properly. There is no technical data about its latitude, but it’s obvious that it isn’t much.
A green filter could add even more contrast to the scenes, so if you aren’t ready for very strong shadows and some potential loss of detail in the highlights, this film may not be the best choice.
When I used to shoot digital, I routinely bumped contrast on all of my black-and-white photos (I still do that to some of my film scans); thus, this look is not a problem for me. Still, it’s important to be mindful of the scene’s dynamic range when shooting this film to ensure that it doesn’t disappear objects and subjects that are central to the composition.
Developing and scanning Film Ferrania Orto 50.
Everything you see in this article was developed in Rodinal, using the exact instructions from Ferrania’s film page:
1:50, 20℃/68℉ 18 minutes, no pre-wash. The first 30 seconds: two inversions per 5 seconds, then 10 seconds of gentle agitation per minute ‘till complete.
You may try other developers or stand development to slightly reduce the contrast. Alex Luyckx had great results with Kodak D-76.
Once out of the tank, the film curls slightly, but not enough to affect scanning or archiving. The negatives can look very contrasty, but there’s also very little fogging, which I find very useful when digitizing film (easier inversions).
Since Orto 50 is a fine-grained film, it can accept some significant contrast manipulation and edits in post. But don’t expect to restore much detail in the shadows if they’re pitch-black.
How much does Film Ferrania Orto 50, and where to buy it.
As of this writing, Film Ferrania’s Orto 50 is selling for about $12-14 per roll — perfectly reasonable for this film. It’s fairly well-distributed, though I’m not sure how many brick-and-mortar shops carry it. I bought mine online along with a few more things to make the shipping worth the cost.
❤ By the way: Please consider making your Film Ferrania Orto 50 using this link so that this website may get a small percentage of that sale — at no extra charge for you — thanks!