Harman Phoenix 200

Before I start writing about my feelings about the film, let me preface this post by saying that I am well aware of the nature of Harman Phoenix. I know it's still an in-development product. It's been reviewed multiple times by photographers who have more knowledge and experience than I do. I've read or watched many of the reviews to get a feeling of what product I was dealing with and I was prepared for the film's shortcomings.

Let the final word of the previous paragraph be a segue to this one: shortcomings. I'm deliberately not dubbing the film "experimental", "quirky", "characterful" or "interesting". Instead, as a consumer, I expect Harman to release a film stock that's perfect in as many aspects as possible. A 200 ISO film with characteristics comparable to Kodak's ColorPlus/Gold or Fujifilm's C200 would be a testament to Harman's excellence in the colour film manufacturing process. Anything below that baseline comparison, at least in their first colour film stock, means that they haven't yet done their homework and cannot nail the process and/or emulsion formulae yet. I'd like Harman to make a neutral, quirk-free consumer-grade product before catering to the artist niche later if they want to.

Before I'd purchased the film, I was already primed by the reviews to anticipate a fairly poor performance: thick grain, uncontrolled halation, poor dynamic range, no tolerance for underexposure, unnatural colours with a heavy shift towards oranges and reds in the midtones and a teal cast in the shadows. I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about either of these phenomena. I expected to hate this film. And yet, I purchased a total of three rolls.

I settled on two trips and two ISO speed settings to test the film. On a second trip to Lidzbark Warmiński, I shot an entire roll at ISO 100, mostly inside the castle. Then, during a quick visit to Tczew and a few walks around Gdańsk centre, I shot another at ISO 200. This review is based on my first two rolls of Phoenix. I'm leaving the third one for another occasion.

Grain and Sharpness

There's no denying that Phoenix is grainy. Very grainy. However, upon close inspection, I find that the grain isn't necessarily much thicker than other consumer-grade ISO 200 films. Instead, it's very contrasty, creating an impression of thickness. To my eyes, the size of individual grains is within reason. It's their contrasty appearance that makes the image disintegrate at even medium magnifications. This makes fine detail very difficult to discern.

Sharpness is poor. In part, this is caused by the grain. The details are noticeably softer than in the case of a typical consumer-grade film, even an ISO 400 one. On a 10x15 cm print, this lack of detail won't be noticeable. It's acceptable for social media as well. For anything that requires some detail to show up, Phoenix is a no-go.

I don't currently own a medium format camera in a usable state so I did not have a chance to test the 120 variant of Phoenix. The reviews online are quite ecstatic about it because the size of a medium format frame masks the grain and the lack of sharpness.

Halation

There's little to say here: there's halation, full stop. This film lacks an anti-halation layer; there's no running away from halos around any intense light. As to whether this is a fatal flaw, I'm not sure. Depending on the way the film is scanned and processed, the halation may or may not be apparent. When I processed the photos with Filmomat SmartConvert, it was very noticeable. When I processed the same raw scan with darktable's Negadoctor module, it wasn't obvious: the colours were such that the halation blended with the surroundings. Even where it was apparent, it didn't manage to ruin a single photo.

Colours

The colours are a function of the negative scan processing. With the lack of an orange mask and the slightly purple tint of the film base, I understand why some software might struggle with getting the colours right.

With SmartConvert, the colours are a bit inconsistent due to the software's algorithm for picking the white balance. In the photos I processed, shadows tend to take on a teal tint in some pictures, and brownish in others. The reds were always punchy and oranges were shifted towards red. The greens were shifted towards cyan and usually very dark. The blues looked natural but were overpowered by the other hues.

With Negadoctor, I was able to get fairly natural-looking colours thanks to the module's separate processing of shadows and highlights. Still, it proved a difficult task. The reds, greens and blues behaved pretty much the same way as with SmartConvert though and to make the images look natural, I was forced to apply the colour equaliser with a few tweaks: desaturate the yellows to get rid of a yellowish cast in the highlights, desaturate the reds and oranges, shift the teals towards green, lighten the greens. With these adjustments, the colours were at a natural-looking baseline state where I could start processing them to achieve the desired artistic effects.

The bottom line is that Phoenix colours are tricky to work with. They can be made to look pretty natural, but they need serious persuasion from the processing software.

Exposure Latitude

This was possibly the thing that I'd feared the most. Most online reviews that I'm familiar with describe Phoenix's exposure latitude as poor. Still, I'm happy to report that it's not that terrible. Yes, the deepest shadows are a bit muddy. Yes, the brightest highlights are completely blown out. However, apart from the most contrasty situations, both contain enough detail. The important thing is to work with a raw image scan instead of a JPEG, otherwise, the rather contrasty nature of the film ends up crushing the ends of the dynamic spectrum.

Additionally, it was interesting to see no discernible difference between ISO 100 and ISO 200. If the conditions are dark, I'd lean towards overexposure to bring out marginally more shadow detail. Otherwise, I believe shooting at box speed is fine.

In my reciprocity failure tests, I usually added one stop of exposure. This led to overblown highlights. For shutter speeds up to 5 seconds, I'd therefore lean towards adding no more than a third of a stop, then maybe 2/3. Note however that I tested reciprocity failure mostly when shooting at ISO 100. At box speed, these findings are likely invalid.

In conclusion, I can't entirely agree with the common complaints about this film. It's all a matter of working with a raw scan and using the correct tools. This film's exposure latitude is nothing to write home about, but it's not a disaster either. If anything, it looks like it's better to avoid excessive overexposure as the highlights tend to degrade faster than the shadows.

Conclusion

Here's a list of the film's characteristics, all in one place, along with my subjective feelings about them:

• Very obtrusive grain (unacceptable)
• Poor sharpness (unacceptable)
• It is tricky to get colours right (undesirable but I can live with that)
• Prominent halation (I don't mind)
• Rather poor exposure latitude (I don't mind)

The above list contains only negatives and no positives. Still, I can sum Phoenix up as an up-and-coming film that is currently difficult to work with. If Harman improves sharpness and grain in future iterations, it may become a frequently used film for me. For now, I'll stick with Kodak. I'll be keeping an eye on Phoenix though. One day, it might outclass its competitors.