Greetings, random reader, and happy new year!
I haven’t written much in this new year mostly because I’ve been busy doing nothing at work. Today would not have been different from any other day except I had a meeting at the Minnesota DNR in St. Paul and decided to hang out at Dunn Bros. on Grand and Snelling afterwards. What does one do in coffee shops anyway, besides sipping coffee?
It so happen that I just received a couple of bricks of expired Neopan SS 135-36 film… So, I thought I’d quickly write about Fuji black and white films and my experience with them. I will update this post later and attach some example photos.
Fujifilm (was Fuji) makes or used to make the Neopan line of black and white films. My first experience with it was with Fuji Neopan 400 and 1600 back in the mid to late 1990s. My first impression was that Neopan 1600 had a pretty pretty low contrast and fine grain for a super fast film. I was impressed, specially since I’ve mostly used Kodak T-Max 3200 (and later, Ilford’s Delta 3200). Neopan 400 didn’t do anything to me. My favorite ISO 400 film at the time was Agfa APX 400. But then, I seldom used ISO 400 films; most of the time I either use ISO 100 or the super fast films.
In 1998, my roommate at that time, Tom Gelatt, came back from Antarctica (via New Zealand) and gave me a couple rolls of Fuji Neopan SS. I’ve never heard or saw this film before. So, I had to try it. I liked it but I don’t remember being all that impressed with it either. I think I was more impressed that Fuji came out with a slow speed film.
I think I got my first Neopan Acros the following year. I think I preferred the SS over the Acros but it’s been awhile… I also thought they were the same film, named for different markets. It wasn’t until a couple days ago that I found out the Neopan SS actually had the classic b/w emulsion instead of the newer “T-grain” emulsion of the Acros and Neopan 400/1600. So, having acquired that information, I decided I need to try both films again. I will post the results with example. In the meantime, here’s my rough description of the Neopan films:
Film ISO Description
Neopan SS 100 Fuji’s traditional (with cubic silver halide grains), slow speed film
Neopan Acros 100 Supposedly has the same tonal response as SS but with the newer flattened silver halide grains (Kodak calls this T-grain). This should be finer grained than SS.
Neopan 400 400 T-grain film, fast, fine grain
Neopan 1600 1600 T-grain, super fast, finer grained and lower contrast than similar high speed films
Examples to follow.
I just put up a gallery of some old Kodak IE color infrared photos I took in 1990. I have a few more that needs scanning and will add them when they’re done. You can view the gallery here.
I just published my initial page on installing open source desktop GIS software on your Windows computer. This will be a running series… check back often to stay up-to-date.