Fuji Neopan 1600: Flexible and Not Just for Low Light

Fuji Neopan 1600 is a fast black and white film, great for low light use, although fantastic when there is light around. It provides great contrast, detail and sharpness, and is definitely a film to look out for.

If your read my Ilford SFX 200 film review you will know that a couple of months ago, I picked up a small lot of film—8 rolls to be exact—which included 2 rolls of Fuji Neopan 1600. I had previously used a roll of Neopan 400 and got great results and found the film fantastic, so the 1600 had a lot to live up to.

When I initially received my rolls of film, I put a roll of Neopan 1600 straight into my 120 Holga as I wanted to do an experiment with it, which involved increasing the lens aperture of the Holga significantly to around f./2.8, though this completely failed and meant I got no images at all. However, I will attempt this again once I have purchased another Holga. Anyway, I am getting side-tracked. When I was developing that film, I used a stand develop method as I do with most films and noticed that when I poured out the developer, it had turned a vibrant green colour, which I believe has something to do with the make up of the film.

Anyway, I decided I would use my next film in a few weeks, so it sat around for a while.

A few weeks past and the film hadn’t yet been shot. However, that weekend, I was going to my girlfriend’s place and lovely weather was forecast. I looked on my film shelf, and to my horror, only had two rolls left: the roll of Neopan 1600 and a roll of Kodak HIE which I am saving for summer for some infared fun. So I was stuck with a 1600 film on a sunny day.

I experiment quite alot with developing and different developing times and pushing and pulling films, so decided that would be the best way foward with this Neopan 1600, I decided I would shoot it at ISO 400 and then develop accordingly.

Whilst at my girlfriend’s house we went on a walk with her parents and sister, so off we went. I had my Yashica Electro 35 loaded with Neopan 1600. I shot away at ISO 400, which meant I was using f16.

Shooting the film was the easy bit but now I had to develop it. I wasn’t worried about getting the time right but was worried that I may have pulled the film a bit too far. I developed the film in Rodinal 1:100 so it wouldn’t develop as fast and would hopefully develop evenly. I developed it for 20 minutes with 30 seconds initial agitation and 3 agitations ever minute.

Here are some results from the roll:

As you can see it came out fine, in fact very well, it has nice tones and very high contrast, there is also some nice grain but it still is very detailed and sharp.

Overall, it’s a fantastic film and one not just for low light. It surprised me massively and will definitely pick up some more and I will shoot it in the exact same way as I love the high contrast.

Thanks for reading! Keep shooting!

written by brandkow93 on 2012-05-29 #gear #black-and-white #monochrome #review #neopan #grain #low-light #lomography #1600 #fujifilm #detailed #black-and-white-film-user-review