Head-To-Head | Acros v. Acros

Fujifilm Neopan Acros 100 is a film that has achieved cult status and is almost universally loved by film photographers. Personally, I see the value in Acros and appreciate what it can do, but it never became a staple in my photography. It offers fine-grain, incredible sharpness and tonality. It also has a long reciprocity making it perfect for long exposure. A capable portrait film that provides amazing skin tones, but is also versatile to use in other applications like landscape, astrophotography, and architecture. But then Acros 100 went away; Fuji discontinued Acros 100 in 2018, citing the inability to source the needed raw materials. But a year later, they announced the reintroduction of a new formula for Acros 100, Neopan Acros 100 II, which Fuji said was the same as the original but used new materials. Fuji confirmed that the emulsion was made in Japan but finished and packaged in the UK. Of course, that didn’t stop the voices on the Internet from coming up with all sorts of conspiracies about the film that it wasn’t actually Acros but a rebrand of a Harman Technologies (Ilford) product. And while there are plenty of other head-to-heads of these two films, I wanted to throw my own hat into the ring and put Acros and Acro II to the test and see where they’re the same and where they’re different.

For this head-to-head, I got my hands on a roll of expired but cold-stored Acros 100 from James Lee’s extensive film fridge and paired it with a fresh roll of Acros II. Both are in 35mm, 36-exposure. I went with my Nikon F5 and Minolta Maxxum 9; though they’re different brands, they are very close in specs and metering. To help with that, I set both cameras to aperture priority so I could match the aperture. For the lenses, I went with my 50mm f/1.4 lenses, as both the Minolta and Nikon versions have the same construction and similar performance, and I added the same yellow filter to each. Both rolls were shot on the same day and at the same time, with only a slight timing difference to allow for switching bodies. I worked to match compositions across cameras, with only minor differences. For development, I processed both rolls in the same tank using Flic Film’s Crawley’s FX-37, a non-solvent developer designed to maximise sharpness in modern t-grain emulsions. I should have used Fuji Microfine or SPD, but those pouches have not yet arrived. Then I scanned the Acros 100 first, then the same frames from the Acros II roll. I scanned using my Epson V700 with SilverFast 9SE and edited and combined the images in Photoshop CC. I then picked my favourite six shots, paired them, and included a 100% crop of each.

One of the first things I noticed when I pulled the negatives out of the tank was how similar they looked. The actual frames, the edge markings are clearly different, with Acros 100 looking very 'digital' while the Acros II has a much cleaner font and does look similar to what you see on the edge markings of Harman products. Even after a few days of tight back-rolling, Acros 100 still had a slight cup, but it didn't interfere with scanning the negatives. The histograms of the two films differ slightly, but the difference is clearly there. Other than that, both films seemed to share a similar sharpness and grain structure.

So what is the difference between these two films? There is a difference; it's subtle, but it is there. It has to do with contrast, while in some examples there is very little, but in others there is a clear difference between the two. Acros 100 is a far flatter image in terms of contrast, making it far better for darkroom printing, which adds contrast with traditional paper and through contrast filters. Acros 100 II has more contrast, which makes it easier to scan. While you can scan Acros 100 and print Acros 100 II, each film is better suited to its respective method. The other difference between the two is that the film base, Acros 100 II, dries flatter and doesn't take as much to get it ready for scanning, while Acros 100 dries with a cup that can be overcome, but is a bit more difficult. Again, this makes sense because in darkrooms, there's usually a film drying cabinet for careful temperature control, and an enlarger that holds a negative perfectly flat with a negative holder and clamps it in place.

What I have come to realise is that there is no truth to the conspiracies that Acros II is actually an Ilford product. But there is evidence that the film was finished by Harman, as shown by similar edge-marking fonts, differences in backing paper on 120 films, and box sizes. Yeah, the boxes are different between Acros 100 and Acros 100 II in 35mm and Ilford-style plastic film canisters. Of course, there is a contrast, but that could be due to changes in raw materials. But beyond that, Acros 100 II offers the same fine grain, sharpness, and developing times as Acros 100, but makes it a little better for modern means of displaying film photos online through digitisation rather than traditional darkroom prints.