Through Ezo's Eyes: Film Review of the "Creative" Fomapan 200

Hello, dear Dergi Amania readers! In today’s blog post, we will be exploring FOMAPAN 200, a black and white film that proudly holds the title ‘Creative’. A few beautiful frames captured through Ezo’s lens will accompany me throughout this review.

Let’s take a brief look at the history of Foma 200. Based in the Czech Republic since its founding in 1921, Foma has been manufacturing black and white photographic products throughout its century-long existence. As technologies and industries have evolved, so has their product range—expanding from glass plates to medical X-rays and cinematography. Today, they focus on a small yet comprehensive, accessible, and reliable selection of black and white emulsions available in 35mm, 120, and sheet film.

They appropriately named their medium-speed film, FOMAPAN 200, ‘Creative’. Compared to the 100 and 400-speed variants, Foma 200 has a distinctly different character. While Foma 100 and 400 offer sharper contrast, Foma 200 presents a much softer texture. It features lower contrast and a finer grain structure. It is available in 35mm, 120 medium format, and 4×5 sheet film. In fact, even though I was shooting with a 28mm lens, I managed to capture some truly beautiful exposures.

Are you ready for a few frames warm enough to make you feel like you’ve stepped right into a classic movie?

I mentioned earlier that while this film has a visible grain structure, it renders that grain finely and softly. Looking at the frame I’ve included to highlight this feature, we can clearly see the soft texture of the grain. Furthermore, depending on the exposure, its contrast can either make the stark black and white tones pop, or cause the shadows to crush more quickly compared to other films.

In this indoor shot taken with a flash, the direct impact of the light on my face is quite evident. As we’ve seen in some of our previous color film reviews, a flash usually accentuates the red tones in my face. However, with this black and white emulsion, there are no harsh or unflattering tones to catch the eye. On the contrary, we can see a beautifully balanced contrast between the deep blacks separated from the ambient darkness (the walls and surroundings) and the whites (which, in this context, happens to be me).

Now, did any of you catch the hidden detail in the photograph? Another reflection of me in the glass… I absolutely love frames with little surprises like this.

I find myself gazing in awe at a snowy Bursa landscape. While happily wandering through Muradiye, a historic neighborhood famous for its bay-windowed houses, I was strolling around, a bit saddened to find my favorite cafe closed for the day. I dive into the local street market; right in the middle, a child with a bicycle has taken shelter under the market umbrellas, quietly watching the snow fall. Technically, I am watching him, too. In that moment, as pondering what the child might be feeling fills me with immense joy, I pull out my camera and capture the scene.

The people standing under the umbrella appear quite dark because they are deep in the shadows. Meanwhile, the stark whiteness of the snow accumulating on the tree branches and the umbrellas is completely blown out. This makes the contrast in the exposure incredibly apparent. While the contrast was dense and heavy in the shadows, it took on a much thinner structure in the highlights. If I had stepped just a little closer to the scene before taking the shot, the flash would have reached those shadowed areas, yielding a much more balanced exposure.

But, of course, I am not going to sit around and fret over it. Analog, with its nature that sometimes leaves room for such beautiful imperfections, only endears itself to me even more.

Does every ‘moment’ hold a memory? I must confess, I am someone who is quite hesitant to simply burn through a roll of film. This stems from both the cost and the inherently limited number of exposures it offers compared to modern technology. I had previously mentioned my little misadventure of finding my favorite cafe closed on the day I captured that snowy landscape. Yet, as fate would have it, a few months later, I found myself shooting on that very same roll of film—this time, as a short-term employee at that exact cafe.

Isn’t it a beautiful coincidence? You spontaneously shoot the first frames of a roll in one place, and as you reach the final exposures, you find yourself right back in the very same location. And at the time, you are completely unaware of it. By photographing my coworkers, I left myself a beautiful memory to reflect upon so deeply.

Even though I was shooting toward the light source, the resulting photograph is quite dark. It is grainy, yet it doesn’t possess a harsh structure; instead, the grain is incredibly delicate and naive. As much as it is a black and white film, Fomapan has beautifully conveyed the warmth of that summer day through its wonderfully soft tones.

I did come across the one single issue that Fomapan 200 users seem to complain about: black spots. Out of a 36-exposure roll, I encountered it on only a single frame. At first, I thought it might be a scanning issue, though I was also aware it was a known quirk of the film stock itself. Personally, when I look at the photograph, rather than labeling them as ‘flaws’, I feel they add a rather lovely vintage vibe.

Driven by the impact of the flash and the direct sunlight focused entirely on the subject, the white tones take center stage and are quite blown out. Yet, it is unmistakably balanced. We simply cannot ignore the beautiful harmony of the contrasting tones in this exposure. After all, aren’t we humans just like that, too?

In short, thanks to its medium speed of 200 and clean rendering, Fomapan delivers a truly classic film look. It is highly versatile and open to creative adjustments, capable of yielding beautiful results with professional cameras. Yet, with its unforgiving nature towards mistakes, it serves as an ideal black and white film for beginners to truly learn the craft.

If, like me, this is going to be your very first black and white film experience, I highly recommend adding it to your choices. Thank you for bearing witness to my memories.

May your passion for analog live on forever..
CEREN DÜZGÜN