First roll of Harman Phoenix photos up!

Anon Ymous

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There's a video with two young chemists from Ilford who mentioned the 123,5 ISO number. Now, if you look at the datasheet, this film has a pronounced shoulder, so I suspect that's why they suggest underexposing lightly. Additionally, it might reduce halation, which this film is highly susceptible to. If you're scanning, the shoulder isn't that much of a problem, since you can shape the curve any way you like.

Ok, found it, it's around the 10:40 mark:

 

pbromaghin

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Thanks! Since I wasn't going to buy/shoot it I didn't pay all that much attention to specifics and misremembered the iso.
 

pentaxuser

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So Harman will run with this film and a more conventional one in the future? It has the "set-up" to do both? What happens if Harman discover that traditional film users do not buy in sufficient quantities to make this a viable move?

pentaxuser
 

Brad Deputy

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It was explained earlier that the "hipster" market, or Lomo, is a slim minority of film buyers in the USA. Whether I believe that or not, is another question...

Where the film demand dictates, they will produce what the people want. Of that I have little doubt.
 

LeoniD

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Can someone help me read the characteristic curve graph?
It looks like normal contrast to me, and this book seems to agree http://istoriya-foto.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0000018/st023.shtml -
G ΔD 1.43 γ0.68
B ΔD 1.7 γ0.85
R ΔD 1.4 γ0,67
perfectly normal contrast compared to standard 0.65 for C41, except in B, but that's probably on my end
But then why in videos the highlights seem to get blown out easily even at ei 200 and in the datasheet there's a line about "highlight control"?

I'd gladly try to make a datasheet on my own, but it turns out, my uni's film processing facility is mostly dead, QC lab is now costume department, and both sensitometers spent the last 10 years in the basement together with the densitometer(s?), sooo yeah
 

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koraks

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@LeoniD
I don't have a degree in sensitometry either, so let's see if I can help with my hobby-level arithmetic and chart-divination.

From here: https://www.kodak.com/content/products-brochures/Film/Basic-Photographic-Sensitometry-Workbook.pdf


Applied to the chart from the Phoenix datasheet:


Green channel: for approx. Going from 1.1 to 2.2 is 1.1 unit of change on the X-axis, and that's associated with an increase in density of approx. 1.1 to 2.45 = delta 1.35 --> gamma = 1.23
Blue: same exposure range, density increase of 0.8 to 2.3 = gamma 1.36
Red: density goes from ca. 0.7 to 2.0 --> gamma = 1.18

Let's do a reality check and compare the Phoenix curve (plot in blue) to let's say Gold 200 (plot in cyan) which is a similar-speed film.

I guess this makes the difference a little more tangible. Note not just the difference in gamma, but also the dmin in the different colors.
For the plot above, I had to make a call of how to overlay the horizontal axes, since both companies choose to plot relative log exposure (this makes the comparison possible), but choose different reference points (this makes it arbitrary how you overlay the x-axes of both plots, as long as they're scaled to the same units).

To verify, let's calculate the gamma for Gold 200's green channel over its straight-line region:

Exposure range = -2.4 to 0.0 (log) = 2.4
Density range = 0.8 to 2.0 = 1.2
dLogD / dLogE = 1.2/2.4 = 0.5
Blue is a little higher than green, red is similar to green.
The numbers shift around a bit depending on how you define the start and end points, which is something I'll probably get smacked over the head for in the next few posts. But this will hopefully clarify a few more things about assumptions/decisions that need to be made when calculating gamma.

However, I think this paper napkin exercise shows how Phoenix is really 'something else'.

LeoniD said:
this book seems to agree http://istoriya-foto.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0000018/st023.shtml -
Click to expand...

What I find very unfortunate about that web page is that none of the illustrations show example numbers on the axes of the plots. This makes it impossible to verify if you've correctly understood the arithmetic that the authors explain (I assume they do; I didn't read/translate the text). In this sense, the Kodak manual I linked to is better, and I think if you combine both, you have a decent starting point to work from.
 

Agulliver

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pentaxuser said:
So Harman will run with this film and a more conventional one in the future? It has the "set-up" to do both? What happens if Harman discover that traditional film users do not buy in sufficient quantities to make this a viable move?

pentaxuser
Click to expand...

Harman need to sell Phoenix to recoup the costs of R&D to get this far. We must remember they are comparatively speaking a small company compared to the likes of Kodak and do not have the staff or resources even modern day Kodak have. They're intending to "improve" the film....we assume towards a more conventional colour negative film but nobody knows exactly what that means. Ektar, Superia Xtra, Color Plus and Portra could all be described as "conventional" C41 films but all are very different.

Whether they keep Phoenix in production too will depend on if that's physically viable and if the market says people still want to buy it once they're able to offer something more "conventional" too. If enough people fall in love with Phoenix for it's quirks, they might keep it going. Though that doesn't quite match what they're saying. What they're saying is that they intend to improve it with each new iteration, presumably with the end goal of producing something with wider appeal.
 

mtnbkr

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My 2 rolls arrived last night and I now have one loaded in my New F-1 with the FD 50/1.4. I'm going to shoot the entire roll with this lens. I've set ISO to 160 based on the reviews. Unfortunately, this time of year is very drab, so I don't know if I'll get anything good colorwise.

Chris
 

ChrisGalway

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All this talk of Harman's reputed marketing prowess reminds me of this classic clip from The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

Nothing can hide the fact that this film is of poor quality. Any normal company would have costed out the project properly, and then only released a product of some quality. After all, Harman has a reputation (until Phoenix) of excellence, making arguably the best B&W films in the world.
 

BrianShaw

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What makes you think Harman didn’t do those “proper” things; it could be that the film quality they released meets their immediate goals? That seems quite likely to me. It’s not uncommon for a company to “pivot” in a different direction as they change.
 

ChrisGalway

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Because everything else they do is so good. Harman has set standards for high quality for quite some time. By producing an inferior quality colour film they are damaging their brand.

By hey, perhaps that's the future!
 

brbo

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ChrisGalway said:
Because everything else they do is so good. Harman has set standards for high quality for quite some time. By producing an inferior quality colour film they are damaging their brand.
Click to expand...

Most people who use Harman's Ilford branded products have never heard or noticed that they are made by Harman. So Harman Phoenix will not attach associations of inferior quality to HP5+, Delta 100, etc... Those who do know about Harman are knowledgeable enough to realise what is the state of Phoenix project at the moment.

If anything, Harman's Ilford line might be hurt by colour films (which are not that great) sold by Ilford Imaging under Ilford IlfoColor brand.
 
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tykos

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ChrisGalway said:
Nothing can hide the fact that this film is of poor quality.
Click to expand...

well, not that harman is presenting this film like the new better portra: "experimental", "high contrast and strong visible grain", "it has characteristics that make this very different to the more traditional, established C41 colour negatives films", "occasional coating anomalies", "striking halation effects", "atypical colour rendering", but also in their interviews.
And that is, i suppose, after a very strong work done by the marketing team.

They also are very transparent in telling that this is only the first result of their R&D, but the final deal is making some real film.
Don't understand why people are so bothered about it...
 
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Dustin McAmera

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Volkswagen owns Seat and Skoda. This has never damaged the VW brand; rather, it made people more likely to consider trying a Skoda.


I recently found myself considering whether I might try one of the Lomography films, after reading a thread about it here. Not something I would normally think of. But this feels different, because I know Ilford of old. If they've made this, it's probably worth a look. IT had better be: I have four rolls of it now: until I get a bright day to go out, I'm trying to choose what cameras to put it in.
 
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ChrisGalway

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Good point, I forgot that, I'm so used to associating Harman with Ilford-branded great B&W film.
 

analogwisdom

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Two rolls of Phoenix came in the mail today. It's been so long since I've shot 35mm that my AE-1 I dug out from the shelves is dead, even with a new battery. Uh-oh! Time to try and see if I can fix it...
 

Andrew O'Neill

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My local camera store guy was talking to an Ilford rep who told him that with each version of this new film, there will come improvements. They will also put out different ISO versions if this new film is a success. He was also told that Ilford wants to become "the" colour film manufacturer.
 

BrianShaw

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Nice goals. Hope it works out! Did he really mean Ilford or did he intend to say Harman?
 

Andrew O'Neill

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BrianShaw said:
Nice goals. Hope it works out! Did he really mean Ilford or did he intend to say Harman?
Click to expand...

Now that you mention it, I don't recall. To me it's all the same... like Kodak
 

BrianShaw

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@DustinMcAmerica… yes, a niggly detail, I suppose.
 
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