First roll of Harman Phoenix photos up!

Agulliver · Dec 16, 2023

koraks said:
Certainly. And there's an enormous gap between that first and the second group. Which is a pity. 'Even' digital printing is really great.

100% agree, it's lovely to have physical photographs even digitally printed. It's not that a wet print isn't in some ways objectively better when done expertly, it's still nice to see and hold actual prints....or display them.

But we know that the vast majority of Phoenix and all C41 film will never be printed. It'll be shared on social media, published on websites, it will exist in the digital domain. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Samu · Dec 16, 2023

I got mine, and made first RA-4 prints out of it. It is grainy, but not overly so. It is grainy in the same sense an Agfa consumer negative film from late 1980's would have been. It does have some issues with color crossover, but nothing catastrophic. In my opinion, getting decent RA-4 prints from Vision3 cross processed in C-41 is much harder. Of course, these pictures are far from technically perfect. but I am not expecting anything like this from a limited edition experimental film. It was easier to print than I thought, and even the filtration needed was not excessive. I needed just a bit more yellow filter than a normal C-41 film would need. Magenta was approximately in the same range as needed for other films. Biggest issue was the contrast. I had some frames with seriously underexposed church bell tower with practically no detail, and sky of maximum density. And it was overcast today! Unfortunately I had just an hour of light before sunset, and ended up shooting with the aperture priority auto exposure of my old, reliable Pentax ME Super. The light meter is under normal conditions good enough to shoot slide film - of course with its limitations. It seems to be that for good results, you need to do manual exposure with spot metering with this film.

Not perfect, but you can print this film in a darkroom, and get decent, although not perfect results.

koraks · Dec 16, 2023

Samu said:
In my opinion, getting decent RA-4 prints from Vision3 cross processed in C-41 is much harder.

Hm, my experience is different. But the filtration direction you mentioned fits what I noticed; lots more yellow needed, but magenta is a bit closer to normal. Contrast is very high of the film; the example print you show must have been a very underexposed negative. My normal exposures of flat subjects come out very punchy, and normal exposures of normal contrast scenes will require lots of burning in, flashing and/or masking; there's no way they would print straight for acceptable contrast. I was printing maskless Aerocolor yesterday and it's straightforward in comparison with this film. C41 processed Vision3 also prints OKish and most certainly much easier than Phoenix with more true to life results.

chriscrawfordphoto · Dec 17, 2023

koraks said:
Could you illustrate this, please, or point us towards an on online accessible source that gives insight into the nature and degree of this shifting? I've rooted around a bit last week, but didn't find anything particularly useful. I'm sorry, I don't have the Shanebrook book and I'm also not going to drop several hundred $$$ on it (I'd rather spend that on film...). I'm sure the gist of this particular argument must be published somewhere since it seems fairly generic knowledge.

It is unfortunate that the shipping costs for Robert Shanebrook's books are so high to Europe, because his books are incredible. I have both, which were not terribly expensive for me since I'm in the US.

koraks · Dec 17, 2023

chriscrawfordphoto said:
It is unfortunate that the shipping costs for Robert Shanebrook's books are so high to Europe

I admit that this is a major factor in my not having purchased it, yet. Shipping, and there's also taxes and additional costs to consider. The 2nd, most relevant/valuable edition would cost me $175 inc. shipping, to which I'd have to add around $17-22 inspection fees and around $37 in taxes, which means $230-240 delivered to my doorstep. And to be frank, at that price point, I'd be more inclined to purchase Fujita's "Organic Chemistry of Photography".

Molli · Dec 18, 2023

Just a thank you to @koraks, @Lachlan Young, @Samu and @albireo and everyone else who has offered their insights and expertise to this thread.
I don't use colour film overly much, but wanted to add my support to Harman and invest in their R&D efforts by buying some rolls of Harman Phoenix 200.

While I do have a colour enlarger, I don't have any ventilation in my darkroom that I'd be comfortable printing C41 within.
Koraks' optical prints were extremely interesting to me, nonetheless, especially as a darkroom print is usually my endgame and I have a better understanding of results when presented within that frame.

My film arrived yesterday, a day touted to be 31°C (88°F) here in southeast Australia - far too contrasty for this film, by all indications.
It wound up being a gloomy 24°C instead, but I was feeling too lazy to go out and use up a roll of pellicule très cher.
All of your personal experiences, along with your expertise, is very much appreciated.

Being supportive is a rather expensive endeavour (particularly for a non-colour photographer!) so thank you again for the time and effort you've all put in to showing your results and expounding upon your thoughts.

From the outset, people's results have reminded me of the advertising on the side of my Diana F+ packaging. With that in mind, it's rather easy for me to like the rendering of Harman Phoenix.

Seeing Koraks' wet print results alongside his scans, I can't help but think of the fact that some languages have far more names for different colours - shades of blue (for example) and native speakers of those languages actually SEE the different shades where those of a more limited vocabulary simply cannot differentiate between one shade and the next.

Harman's Phoenix simply sees differently and it's a new language for us to learn.
I think that's exciting and I'm a little sorry for those who see only limitations and some sort of betrayal of expectations.
Go Harman!

Dustin McAmera · Dec 18, 2023

24 degrees! Yesterday here was a balmy 6°C, after a few days hovering around freezing. But whatever the weather, what you notice here is the midwinter darkness.

Nevertheless, I have used my first roll of Phoenix up. I put it in my Exa, which has an f/1.9 Primoplan suitable for slow film at this time of year, and I set my meter to ISO 125. I started with good intentions of noting my shutter speeds and apertures but that didn't last. I don't think I'll get it developed before Christmas now. The second roll is going to go in My Canon Sureshot Classic 120.

Molli · Dec 18, 2023

I'll be interested to see your results @Dustin McAmera
As you'll have noticed, things get a bit extreme where I am. Before reality overtook the weather report, it was supposed to be 31°C yesterday, dropping to 19°C today.
About standard for Victoria, Australia.

Last week we had a perfect day for roadies to build a concert stage on a hill overlooking Port Phillip Bay for a Summer Music Festival two days later on the Saturday.
The next afternoon, the rain kicked in and didn't stop until Sunday.

At any rate, the reason for my weather report (because I did actually have a reason, for once!) is that I hesitated even more than usual in buying some of this film because I just don't know how suitable it will be for local conditions.

It was launched in California, which seems to follow the same sort of weather patterns we have (perfect - storms - burning to the ground), but it's Winter there, so not of much help to me.

I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and take nine photos in each of the four seasons in one day that we have around here!

Agulliver · Dec 19, 2023

Finally got my first roll of Phoenix dropped off at my local mini lab this morning. It'll be interesting as it's a mix of shooting conditions....a jazz club which put on the spotlights specially for me to take photos that night, some long exposures in the dark evenings of Christmas lights on buildings and of a small section of a river, a little photo walk on a cloudy but sufficiently bright day and finished off with some attempts at photographing my cats indoors on a sunny day.

Will hopefully get scans back from the lab before Christmas, but I won't be able to pick up the negatives until likely early January when I'll have a bash at scanning them on my Epson too.

Agulliver · Dec 19, 2023

Here is a selection. These are straight out of the Agfa DLab2, no correction applied. Some are rather pleasing, some look terrible. The cat does not have green eyes! They are orange! I don't know why the photo of the garden with the Christmas decor is so off, but there are some others I haven't shared yet as the files are too big, with a lot of blue in, that looks bad.

However, I think with more care scanning every single frame could look fine. The ones in the jazz club I actually quite like.

I will post a handful more with no editing other than reducing the file size so they fit here. Word from the lab was that the negs reminded her of slide film.

All shot with a Praktica BX20S, Prakticar 50/1.8 lens

Agulliver · Dec 19, 2023

Here are some more, again good and bad looking, just slightly reduced in size to fit the 2Mb limit,

The photo with the Christmas setup in the garden is the same as 29A above, but simply with "auto correct" applied. I think that with some editing or different scanning settings these could all work.

AnselMortensen · Dec 19, 2023

Those results show a lot of promise.
002, 004, 005, 006 and 17A all show the high-contrast, saturated colors that make this film unique. Thanks for posting them.

koraks · Dec 19, 2023

Agulliver said:
I don't know why the photo of the garden with the Christmas decor is so off

Probably because of the red areas, which have a lot of cyan density in these negatives. This throws off the automatic color correction of the (in this case) Agfa scanner so it starts adding copious amounts of cyan to balance it all out.

Thanks for posting these; I recognize the high contrast of Phoenix for sure.

MultiFormat Shooter · Dec 19, 2023

Agulliver said:
Here are some more, again good and bad looking, just slightly reduced in size to fit the 2Mb limit,

The photo with the Christmas setup in the garden is the same as 29A above, but simply with "auto correct" applied. I think that with some editing or different scanning settings these could all work.

I think 002, 005, and 006 all work quite well. I have a roll, but haven't shot it yet.

Agulliver · Dec 20, 2023

I'll see if I can do a little editing today, though I will be at work so I won't have too much time. I'm barely home until Christmas Eve now with party season in full swing.

I had a little play with some of the worst scans yesterday and even "auto levels" on an ancient version of ACDSee brings them to some sort of acceptable colour rendition. I'm going to try and pick up the negatives before Christmas because I'll have a couple of weeks off and therefore time to scan them myself.

Word from the lab/shop is that customers have been showing up and phoning them to see if they have or can get any Harman Phoenix film. Word has spread and people want to try it. As a very small shop, they were not included in the initial release. I really hope that more retailers are able to get hold of it next year.

Agulliver · Dec 20, 2023

koraks said:
Probably because of the red areas, which have a lot of cyan density in these negatives. This throws off the automatic color correction of the (in this case) Agfa scanner so it starts adding copious amounts of cyan to balance it all out.

Thanks for posting these; I recognize the high contrast of Phoenix for sure.

The worst are definitely the ones with lots of blue sky in. Though the Ladbrokes logo being red and having sky behind it really hasn't fared well either.

But I think that is down to the uncorrected scans, which is just a starting point. even without correction there are some decent photos there, and I absolutely applaud Harman for cooking this up in just 12 months. I may sit the next round out but will no doubt buy some more after a couple of improvements.

The grain is noticeable but it's not actually that bad, though this isn't a film you'd use for large landscape photos.

koraks · Dec 20, 2023

Agulliver said:
But I think that is down to the uncorrected scans, which is just a starting point.

I don't think so. Those scans are heavily 'corrected', as all color negative scans are.

Agulliver said:
The worst are definitely the ones with lots of blue sky in. Though the Ladbrokes logo being red and having sky behind it really hasn't fared well either.

Just hold up those negatives to the light and look at the dyes. That's what the scanner sees. The scanning software then unleashes its autocorrection onto this and tries to get it all back together. Much of the variance you're seeing between images frm this film, even within the same roll/photographer, is down to how extreme the curves are and how that pushes the autocorrection algorithms of various scanning solutions way out of their normal bandwidth and that's how you get pretty wacky results.

If you look at my examples, those were scanned in one go on a flatbed so I knew that all negatives got the same adjustment curve. What you see then is that the colors are actually not all that outlandish; they're pretty extreme for color negative film, but they're far more consistent than what your sample set shows. And this is really because your photos were individually auto-balanced by the lab/minilab/scanner.

Dustin McAmera · Dec 20, 2023

I just looked at the website of my local old-cameras shop to see if they still have Phoenix to sell. They have; but I was surprised to see they have put in place rationing; not just Phoenix but any colour film is now limited to three rolls per customer.

SilverShutter · Dec 20, 2023

Just a quick collage of four images I got from my first roll. I shot this on a Minolta X-500 because the metering is always spot on and I shot it at 200. I scanned using a Plustek 7200 and linear profile. I think the colours are quite appealing, I was expecting much wilder results in line with what others are getting (I think scanning is key for this film).

Dustin McAmera · Dec 20, 2023

Yes - nice!

lamerko · Dec 20, 2023

Ha! These shots are not bad at all

Chuck1 · Dec 20, 2023

Best Phoenix images yet

SilverShutter · Dec 21, 2023

And four more, these show a bit more how it renders muted tones. It certainly oversaturates at times. Grain is like shooting an 800 film.

Agulliver · Dec 21, 2023

@SilverShutter some very nice photos.

Lachlan Young · Dec 21, 2023

koraks said:
Could you illustrate this, please, or point us towards an on online accessible source that gives insight into the nature and degree of this shifting? I've rooted around a bit last week, but didn't find anything particularly useful. I'm sorry, I don't have the Shanebrook book and I'm also not going to drop several hundred $$$ on it (I'd rather spend that on film...). I'm sure the gist of this particular argument must be published somewhere since it seems fairly generic knowledge.

At the simplest level, the mask will add significant Dmin to the blue curve, pushing it into the right place relative to the green & red curves. Hanson's patents & disclosures (SMPTE journal for example - from recall it's written at a more accessible level than you might get in an SPSE publication) are one place to start for understanding the concepts of colour & contrast masking incorporated in colour neg films.

If the film was not intended to be masked for correction of colour and contrast, it would have been quite readily attainable to have the Dmin for each of the three curves in the 'correct' place and the curves designed to deliver a much lower average contrast. Instead, Harman seems to have (quite reasonably) decided that it's better to set things up so that they won't need to completely remake the wheel when adding the mask.

First roll of Harman Phoenix photos up!

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