Rangefinder Magazine
June 2002

First Exposure: Neopan 100 Acros by Don Emmerich

FUJI HAS LONG BEEN A LEADER with their color transparency and negative films, but it seems that their black-and-white emulsions haven’t received as much fanfare until now. Fuji has always had a fine line of black-and-white films; Neopan 400 and Neopan 1600, two films that are versatile and reliable, delivering exceptional image quality and holding up well under push-processing. Fuji’s 400 and 1600 emulsions have had great use on location and for wedding work and some even use the 1600 film for some special grain effects by overexposing it to really “pop” the grain. But, lacking in this family was a medium speed, ISO 100, black-and-white emulsion.

Photographers look for a 100-speed film to deliver fine grain and a smooth tonal range with good shadow separation and rich detailed highlights. Well, Fuji has listened and responded to our needs with a very impressive 100 speed film, Fuji’s Neopan 100 Acros.

With all this movement from silver-halide to silicon and Fuji’s recent release of its S2 digital camera and other digital products, isn’t it nice to know for us film users, that the forward momentum of FujiFilm is still back to the basics, improving their silver-halide based films?
Some of the hype released along with the new film makes such high claims as—extremely fine grain, increased sharpness, well detailed highlights, rich shadow separation with a superb tonal range throughout all with an outstanding exposure latitude. Wow! Did Fuji leave anything out of this film? Let me share with you some of my findings on this new Neopan 100 Acros.

Fuji Neopan 100 ACROS is an ideal film for many applications from studio portraits and weddings, to scenics and landscapes, to products and architectural assignments, as well as the demanding needs of fine art photographer. Just what makes this film so ideal?

My initial tests with Fuji Neopan 100 Acros produced exceptional results, including photographs made in high contrast settings with subjects set against dark evergreen trees and sunlit blue skies. I used the usual array of filters from yellow to orange and green to red with superior results on my test shots. In fact, Fuji Neopan 100 Acros can be used with all types of filters in the usual ways. Follow the instructions that came with your filter regarding exposure compensation. Be careful when using an automatic exposure camera and the deep red or orange filters that tend to produce underexposed negatives (up to 11⁄2 stops). It’s best, in these situations, to use the camera in manual exposure mode and make the exposure compensations manually, based on the manufacturer-recommended filter factor.

This image of Rose Riede was taken with Mamiya’s 645AFD camera and Fuji Neopan 100 Acros. When using Acros 100, the resulting images take advantage of Fuji’s exposure latitude, combined with the film’s finer grain and exceptional sharpness, making it the ideal solution for producing high quality images in a variety of lighting situations.

Performance
The illustration, of Ms. Rose Riede taken near my home in Colorado, was shot with Mamiya’s 645 AFD with 50mm f/2.8 lens. My exposure was 1⁄30 of a second at f/8 and after I had my film processed, I was blown away by the tonal range and the extremely fine grain characteristics of this film. The grain, or let’s say, “what grain?” is a great boon when making enlargements of clients, scenics, fine art images and product photography. These images hold up wonderfully under extreme magnification, so go ahead and make those large prints. This film can handle the job effortlessly.

In my portrait of Rose, the film held all of the deep rich shadows full of detail and separation in tone in her outfit and the rocks behind her. The shadows didn’t block up at all—they are rich in tone and detail. In fact, you even see the threads of the material of Rose’s dress, that’s how much detail, separation and sharpness this new film really produces. Offset this shadow detail, with the extremely smooth gradation of tone to the wonderful clean crisp highlights and smooth flesh tones. Notice how these extremes in contrast are all beautifully held, with tone and detail in the face and great separation in the highlights and shadows. This makes the image take on an almost 3-D quality—there is so much detail and smooth gradation in tones from the deepest black to the richest white.

Neopan 100 Acros is so fundamentally different from any other black-and-white films, by virtue of its unique proprietary Super-Fine 1 (Sigma) Grain Technology. This new grain technology allows the film to reproduce the tones from shadow to highlight rich with detail and exceptional sharpness. In fact, the film has an RMS Granularity of 7, which provides the maximum enlargements from your negatives without falling apart.

The sensitivity that Fuji Neopan 100 Acros has in low light levels makes it ideal for low- to dark-key situations, where detail and tone in the shadows of your image is a must. Another great byproduct of Super-Fine 1 (Sigma) Grain Technology is the high degree of sharpness the film’s emulsion is capable of holding. And in the case of the portrait of Ms. Riede, you can count the hairs on her head and the threads in her dress. Now that’s a sharp negative with an enormous amount of detail.

Another benefit of this new film grain technology is that it provides a full tonal range negative without a lot of manipulation, either in metering or processing. My negatives seemed to have been exposed and processed for the Zone System, except they were metered and processed normally. This is truly a remarkable black-and-white film.

Processing
Fuji’s Neopan 100 Acros responds well in a wide range of film developers, making it easy to optimize this film to existing chemical processes. It is also simple to exploit specific film characteristics for grain, sharpness, or speed with one of the specialized chemistries. I have listed some of the various developer/film speed combinations that work well with this film.

Processing Fuji’s Neopan 100 Acros was a breeze. I tried a number of developers—my favorite was Ilford ID-11 at a 1:1 dilution. I love the smooth gradation of tones and the level of sharpness attained from this developer/film combination. ID-11 is extremely flexible and a good general-purpose film developer providing great results. In every developer test I made, the negative retained excellent shadow detail, rich middle tones, and brilliant highlights. It is easy to maintain all the characteristics from this film in a wide array of film developers and developer styles.

I was quite pleased to find is that Fuji’s suggested development times were an ideal starting point, based on my style of lighting and exposure. I made a few minor adjustments here and there, but basically, you can trust Fuji’s suggested times and get great results the first time and every time.

Above is Fuji’s development times as a general guide to get you started. If you use ID-11, then I’d start out with the dilution of 1:1 at 101⁄2 minutes, then vary it from 91⁄2 to 11 minutes, depending on your particular shooting and processing techniques.

Or, just send it to the lab and let them process the film for you. I sent a number of rolls to three different labs in the Denver area to see if there was a variance between labs. I’m glad to report that Fuji’s Neopan 100 Acros is a very easy film from which to get consistent results, even from different labs with their varying processes. For the image of Ms. Riede for this article, I had the film processed at Photobition in Denver, rather than doing it myself and got great results, as you can see on page 14. So the film truly works well in a wide range of film developers and processes.

Just what makes this film so easy to process? Neopan 100 Acros uses FujiFilm’s Precision Iodine Distribution Control Technology to control the iodine distribution of the silver halide emulsion. Okay enough tech talk, but let me just say that in spite of its fine-grain nature, Neopan 100 Acros may be developed using general-purpose black-and-white developers and standard processing procedures and still produce high quality black-and-white images under a wide range of conditions.

If you opt to process your film yourself here’s how I would go about handling and processing. When processing Fuji’s Neopan 100 Acros in a small “Patterson-style” tank, agitate for the first 30 seconds, after the developer has been poured in, and then agitate with two inversions every 60 seconds until the end of the processing time. Use the above processing times as a good starting point, but run your own tests to fine tune both exposures and processing times to yield negatives that produce the desired density you like and which prints well.

Once the film has been developed, I simply pour out the developer and pour in water at the same temperature and let it sit, no agitation at all, for five minutes. After five minutes, dump the water and pour in fresh fixer for five minutes with agitation every 30 seconds. I use a final wash in running water (same temperature) for 5–10 minutes after the fixer has been poured off. To help shorten your wash time, I advise using a hypo clearing bath, which speeds up the removal of salts.

It is important to keep all water baths and chemical developments at the same temperature to avoid reticulation. Reticulation is very often mistaken for grain, and often leads to misjudging a film’s performance due to sloppy darkroom technique. Once the film has been washed, using a wetting agent aids in attaining uniform air drying at 104°F. And you’re to print or have your lab print you negatives.

Scanning
Another feature of any new film I test is how well it scans and maintains all the qualities you get when printing. Some films perform better than others, so it’s no use having a great new film if the scans from it are too grainy or too noisy to use. I used several type of film scanners on this image, I had it scanned commercially at my lab in Denver, and I also used my Epson and Nikon film scanners. All three sources did a great job with very little tweaking of contrast and exposure. In fact my favorite scan, was from my Epson 2450 scanner using SilverFast scanning software to deliver the final image. This is the image I have used here (page 14).

Final Thoughts
This new film joins the ranks of some other excellent black-and-white products offered by Fuji, producing sharp negatives with maximum detail over the entire negative film contrast range, shorter development times, and consistent results with a variety of developers. Based on extensive test results, made under a wide range of shooting conditions, I believe Fuji’s Neopan 100 Acros is a valuable addition to the already fine line of black-and-white films offered by Fuji.

Fuji has now given photographers a choice of three great black-and-white emulsions. With three choices in black-and-white, which one do I use for what type of photography? Well here’s my guide as a starting point on selecting the right Fuji black-and-white film for the job.

The Right Neopan For the Job
• Fuji’s Neopan 100 Acros yields some of the smoothest tones from shadows to highlights. Use this film when the finest grain, exceptional sharpness and smoothest tonality is required. I tend to use an ISO 100 for most studio work and well lit location assignments.

• Fuji’s Neopan 400 is my ideal choice for many location assignments, such as families, weddings, seniors and environmental sessions, when there isn’t enough light for a 100 speed film. The 400 speed helps stop action with good exposure latitude, good pushability, good grain and a very pleasing tonal range.

• Fuji’s Neopan 1600 is the ideal film for really low-light wedding work. I generally rate it at E.I. 800 to really pop up the effect of the grain. I tend to pull back and do a lot of cropping in order to get the grain effects from a smaller portion of the film. This film would be ideal for low-light sports events and photojournalism type photography.

We are in a new era of photography with the movement to digital, but film isn’t dead. Just when you think that your black-and-white film couldn’t get any better, you realize that Fuji is out there raising the bar for all of us.

Don Emmerich has earned all four PPA degrees offered—Master of Photography, Master Artist, Master of Electronic Imaging and Photographic Craftsman. Don serves on the board of the American Society of Photographers and is their web designer. As a lecturer, teacher and writer he has traveled to 27 countries on four different continents. He was a recent presenter at WPPI 2002. He can be reached by e-mail at: emmerichd@aol.com. Imaging and Photographic Craftsman. Don serves on the board of the American Society of Photographers and is their web designer. As a lecturer, teacher and writer he has traveled to 27 countries on four different continents. He was a recent presenter at WPPI 2002. He can be reached by e-mail at: emmerichd@aol.com.