Acros 100

Acros 100 is the flattest black and white film in common use. Fujifilm built it on very small sigma grain crystals, and the midtones run long and smooth with no step and no crunch. A print from it looks quiet even when the subject is not.

The second reason is reciprocity. Every other film on this list loses sensitivity during a long exposure, so a metered thirty seconds becomes a real ninety. Acros 100 needs no correction out to about two minutes, which makes it the stock for night work, for a heavy neutral density filter and for a pinhole camera.

Say the exposure time out loud in the prompt: a two minute exposure on a tripod. That one clause carries the whole look, because it brings the smeared water, the drawn out cloud and the empty street that a long exposure produces.

Ask for flat smooth grey midtones with no crunch. Then ask for deep even blacks that do not clip, so the shadows stay dark without going solid. Skin from this stock is porcelain flat: it keeps no texture of its own and the long midtone run holds every step from cheek to jaw.

A blue sky prints pale here as it does on every panchromatic film, but the flat curve keeps the gradation, so a bright sky holds its clouds instead of burning to white. A yellow filter brings it to mid grey. For speed, Acros 100 pushes to 200 or 400 with the contrast climbing, and it is not a stock anybody chooses for a push.

Use it for a night cityscape, a seascape with a long exposure, a pinhole picture, a dark interior on a tripod and any exposure longer than about ten seconds.

Leave it alone for anything that moves and for any picture that wants grit. It is flat by design, and a prompt that asks for Acros 100 and for hard contrast cancels itself.

T-Max 100 is the other fine grain stock at this speed. T-Max is sharper and a little harder, and it loses a stop or more to reciprocity in a long exposure. Acros 100 is smoother, flatter and correct at two minutes. Choose by exposure time.

Cinema publishes Low Key and Chiaroscuro at /techniques/cinema/ as entries about hard directional light. Acros 100 is the opposite decision at the film level: a soft long curve that refuses to break into black and white. A grade can crush it later, and the smooth midtones the stock recorded are what the grade has to work with.

Fujifilm launched Neopan 100 Acros in 2000 and called it the finest grain 100 speed film it had made. Its datasheet stated no reciprocity correction out to 120 seconds, which no competing stock could claim. Fujifilm discontinued it in October 2018, then brought it back as Acros II in November 2019, first in 35mm and then in 120, with a new emulsion and the same long exposure behaviour.

The model adds grain, because black and white film reads as grainy by default. Say no visible grain and flat smooth grey midtones with no crunch anywhere.

The contrast climbs and the blacks clip. Say deep even blacks that do not clip, and say the midtones run long and smooth from shadow to highlight.