The original Acros film was discontinued in 2018 and it seemed to be mourned by film shooters around the world, which actually didn’t go ignored by Fuji for long. I bought 4 rolls of Fuji’s new release of its Professional Neopan Acros 100 II film back when it first came out in Spring 2020. I put it in my refrigerator in hopes of shooting it when I had more time to really pay attention.
I recently saw a video made by Ted Viera with the film and thought it was time to thaw out my rolls and give them a shot. Although, I think Ted’s cool voice could talk anyone into anything LOL.
I first shot with the two rolls of 35mm at box speed. I am going to push the two medium format rolls for further experiments. At first I thought it was terrible. This film is very flat, even more so than HP5 when you first scan the negatives, so much so that I thought I may have over exposed them. After further research I realized this is just the look of the film and it leaves a lot of room to add contrast and pushing. I like that.
I haven’t shot many 100 speed films because I usually need faster film for low lighting. The ones I have shot I wasn’t too crazy about, so that may be part of the reason I put off shooting with this film, but I am pleasantly surprised.
You can see the wide gamut of tones this film has from white to black and every grey tone in between. This is a really good feature to have in a film stock because that means it will retain a lot of detail and it can be used in a wide variety of lighting situations.
The one thing I noticed about this film is the amount of detail included in a frame, and I think that is due to the flatness of it. No highlights are blown and shadows retain a lot of information. I don’t know if you can see it in the photo below of my avocado tree because WordPress compresses it, but the shadow detail all the way up the tree is something I haven’t retained in the many other photos I have taken of this tree with other film stocks.
I processed these two rolls in D76 stock solution for 7:15 minutes. I agitated according to the directions in the box for the first minute and then only 5 seconds every minute after that. I’ll bet adding a little more agitation won’t hurt since it could use some contrast.
Final Thoughts
This film isn’t very affordable, probably because it is a professional grade film. It’s about $11.99 on B&H, but it is unlike any black and white film I have seen in my journey so far. I really like it and I think I will definitely be purchasing more in the future when I can afford it.
I am going to push the next roll I have to ISO 400 and if those results are to my liking, I will probably push my last roll even further to 800. Wish me luck, and I hope you’ll stick around to see my results. Please sign up to get my articles in your inbox with the email form at the bottom of this page.
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Until next time, stay motivated and keep shooting.
By Alyssa Chiarello in Riding In Cars with Film
52 pages, published 11/19/2020
I liked the original Acros. It was a good medium-contrast film with lovely middle-gray tones. Looks like the Acros II achieves the same.
When I lived in Japan this was my go to film. It was much cheaper there and easily available. I missed it when I returned to the UK and I did morn it. Now it is back…it is too expensive for me. If friends come to the UK from Japan it is the one thing I ask them to bring. I like it’s tones and it seems to make my shots less…dark.
Exactly there is a lot of tones so I found the blacks aren’t so dark that you lose info. It is very expensive like Delta 3200.