Film Washi is the smallest French film company in the world, that’s because the creator works alone most of the time. The company’s history began with W films*. They expanded their main field of activity after a while to have several varieties of films which includes handcrafted, technical and motion picture films.

The film Washi S is a black and white film that can be exposed between 12 and 50 ASA, meaning a low sensitivity film. People who like black and white films in shades of grey and with very little contrast, you will have to do skip on this one. The S film gives you only black and very strong white results.

The pictures presented at the beginning were all taken within 1 week. Different weather and light conditions were used to test the film. Most of those pictures were taken between 11am and 4pm to have a strong light influence. Of course, it was this influence that strengthened the contrast even more, though it was already strongly present in the film. If you look at some of the pictures, you will see that there are a lot of burned highlights and in order to achieve a well exposed photo, you will have to focus the highlights in first priority.

Regarding grain and film definition, there is little to no grain and an ultra high definition, since it is a low sensitive film. There is a diffuse and smooth finish due to the anti-halation layer located between the film's base and the emulsion layer.
 

To sum up, what I liked very much about this film is that it transforms a simple banal scene into very graphic pictures with extreme contrasts. Views that are well composed and not necessarily interesting in a colour-aesthetic view or in their contrasts will immediately gain a strong personality, depending on the light, how and where you took your exposure.

The S film can also be used very well in double, triple or quadruple-exposure but it deserves at least 2 to 3 test runs to really understand on how it works, before using it on more advanced and/or professional projects.

All the Washi products are available worldwide.

 

* The material they use is hand-coated Japanese Kozo paper. It gives the pictures a unique fiber texture inspired by pictorialism.

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Happy shooting!