Forty years of QuickSnap and this is the first one loaded with black and white. Fujifilm will tell you how to develop it but not what is inside it.
Fujifilm announced the QuickSnap Black and White on 1 July, alongside a waterproof model called the QuickSnap Active, to mark forty years of the single use camera line. It started shipping in September at around $22.90, and the reviews have begun landing over the past couple of weeks. In four decades of QuickSnap, this is the first one Fujifilm has sold preloaded with black and white film.
The specification is what you’d expect from a disposable and no more. ISO 400 black and white negative film, 27 exposures, a fixed focus 32mm lens at f/10, a shutter fixed at 1/140 of a second and a built in flash good for about ten feet. You wind it on with a thumbwheel and you hand the whole thing to a lab when you’re done.
It develops in color chemistry
This is the part that matters more than the camera. The film inside processes in C-41 and CN-16, the same chemistry a lab uses for color negative, which means any high street lab or mailer that handles color can develop it. You’re not hunting for somewhere that still runs a black and white line, and you’re not waiting the extra week that usually comes with it.
Fujifilm hasn’t said what the emulsion is. The company describes it as producing sharp images with smooth grain and leaves it there. The only black and white film Fujifilm currently makes is Neopan 100 Acros II, which is ISO 100, so whatever is in this camera isn’t that. Film that develops in C-41 is almost always a chromogenic stock, which builds its image out of dye rather than silver, and that would explain the processing. Fujifilm hasn’t confirmed it either way.
For monochrome work
A chromogenic black and white film doesn’t behave like a traditional silver one. The grain tends to be finer and smoother, the highlights hold on longer, and the shadows give up sooner. Scans come out cleaner and flatter, which some people like and some people spend an evening fighting. If the sample frames Fujifilm has published are representative, this one leans contrasty rather than gentle.
Whether a fixed f/10 lens and a 1/140 shutter interest you is another question entirely. It’s a camera with one exposure and no decisions in it, which is either the appeal or the problem depending on the day. What’s genuinely useful is that somebody can now shoot a roll of black and white and get it developed anywhere, without owning anything or learning anything first. That’s a lower doorway into monochrome than has existed for a while.