First roll of Harman Phoenix photos up!

[Mark J]

Very good, although the word 'striven' would have been helpful near the beginning.

( edit - sorry I'm referring to the Harman video , which I just watched.. apologies ! )

 

[chriscrawfordphoto]

This is touched upon in the video I posted.

Thanks, I'll check it out later tonight. I haven't had time to watch any of the videos people have posted; today's been a busy day.

*Harman.
The datasheet confirms it's a high-contrast film.
The snippets I've glanced at of negatives on light boxes in the videos suggest it's indeed a very high contrast film with a gamma over 1 (normal C41 is 0.6 or so). The H/D curve in the datasheet is consistent with this.

Harman 200:
View attachment 355265

Portra 400:
View attachment 355266

Thanks for the info, Koraks. The curves look interesting. The film has a definite shoulder, unlike Portra's straight-line curves. The red curve isn't parallel to the other two color curves, which is unusual for a color neg film. I've been shooting a lot of Portra 400 lately, but may buy a couple rolls of this to try.

 

[George Mann]

 

[Lachlan Young]

That they got this far in just 12 months is difficult to understate. And for everyone getting terribly upset about contrast and colour reproduction, go watch the video that has the interview with the Harman photo engineers/ chemists - one of them literally states that the next job will be to sort the masking and anti-halation.

 

[analogwisdom]

That they got this far in just 12 months is difficult to understate. And for everyone getting terribly upset about contrast and colour reproduction, go watch the video that has the interview with the Harman photo engineers/ chemists - one of them literally states that the next job will be to sort the masking and anti-halation.

It's also really cool to see how young those fellas at Harman R&D looked. Usually when you think photographic film industry, it's always older folks. Nice to see the younger generation getting "passed the torch" and being passionate about film.

 

[Revenant]

I am very interested by the suggestion in the cross-processing video that this can be shot and processed as though it were Ektachrome 64T.

 

[analogwisdom]

I am very interested by the suggestion in the cross-processing video that this can be shot and processed as though it were Ektachrome 64T.

Me as well - a friend suggested with the blue cast it had in E6 that an 85B filter might be appropriate. If no one else does it I might have to try that myself...

 

[Sirius Glass]

Thank you for providing examples of what this film is capable of doing.

 

[blee1996]

Thanks for sharing. Quick question: where and how did you get the film developed and scanned?

 

[Jemzyboz]

Thank you for providing examples of what this film is capable of doing.

No problem!

 

[LeoniD]

Leonid,

All the sample pics I'm seeing from the new Harmon film are very high in contrast. Was the Svema film like that? I'm wondering if the Harmon stuff is really that awful looking, or if people are scanning it and turning up the contrast too high in Photoshop?

I mean the more or less properly scanned version. People do seem to scan it awfully though, the high-contrast examples aren't the film's fault. And it's actually iso 123.5, so the marketing team did shoot Harman in the foot making consumers underexpose an already imperfect film by almost a stop. When I get my rolls I'll post it scanned as if it was DS 4, and I'll experiment with processing a bit to try and see what works the best(basically what you had to do with each batch of Svema, except no datasheets ).

 

[Jemzyboz]

Thanks for sharing. Quick question: where and how did you get the film developed and scanned?

Hi, I usually process myself but I was in a hurry to go to Asia so I had to get it processed for me.

Since back then Phoenix was still under embargo, the only authorised places were Harman themselves or Darkroom USA. I sent it to Harman as I am British.

 

[chriscrawfordphoto]

I mean the more or less properly scanned version. People do seem to scan it awfully though, the high-contrast examples aren't the film's fault. And it's actually iso 123.5, so the marketing team did shoot Harman in the foot making consumers underexpose an already imperfect film by almost a stop. When I get my rolls I'll post it scanned as if it was DS 4, and I'll experiment with processing a bit to try and see what works the best(basically what you had to do with each batch of Svema, except no datasheets ).

Thanks, I can't wait to see some good scans from this film. The stuff Harman has put online is just awful. It makes sense knowing that its underexposed though. Wish they were honest about the film's speed, assuming Harman didn't change it to make it faster than the original Svema stuff.

 

[Rudeofus]

That they got this far in just 12 months is difficult to understate. And for everyone getting terribly upset about contrast and colour reproduction, go watch the video that has the interview with the Harman photo engineers/ chemists - one of them literally states that the next job will be to sort the masking and anti-halation.

Masking is not something, where you just add another layer or one more ingredient to an existing one. If they want masking, they'd need to come up with an entire set of new dye couplers, and a much more complicated one, too. Isn't it a bit late in the game to change the dye couplers? Anti halation makes a lot more sense, since it's just another layer, although even that may be hard if they are constrained for max number of layers ...

And all that just to make some measurebators happy, and to break the character of this film?

 

[AnselMortensen]

I just ordered some through Freestyle.
Their email advert had sample photos with extreme contrast & color saturation...WAY more than jemzyboz's images.
I suspect there is a lot of variation with exposure and post processing.

 

[Roger Cole]

I don't see how I could optically print this stuff. I wonder if I sandwiched a piece of blank processed Portra to pick up the orange base if this would make it easier to print??

I think that in the hands of a skilled person scanning and adjusting in Photoshop one could get some nice pictures.

We shall see.

You can largely compensate for the lack of orange mask with filter pack. You should indeed be able to make it print somewhat more normally by sandwiching it with a piece of unexposed but developed regular C41 film.

 

[Roger Cole]

Thanks both, George and Flighter, for your replies. Clearly I live on a different planet. Here's another thought I have just had. I have a dentist's appointment on Monday where the use of a drill may be required but I have no desire that it be of the vintage when drills were driven by a series of slow moving loops of wire as I am old enough to have experienced those as well

pentaxuser

That's just a tool. Film like this is for art, or at least "arty" images. No one will be shooting advertising on this stuff where it has to match the product. I'm eager to try it.

 

[Jemzyboz]

I just ordered some through Freestyle.
Their email advert had sample photos with extreme contrast & color saturation...WAY more than jemzyboz's images.
I suspect there is a lot of variation with exposure and post processing.

Yes, mine were scanned with Harman's lab operators so I imagine they were the most familiar with the film.

 

[George Mann]

New C41 Color Film Review

 

[Lachlan Young]

And it's actually iso 123.5, so the marketing team did shoot Harman in the foot making consumers underexpose

They didn't. What they did was try to reduce the chances of people completely cooking their highlights because of the contrast of the unmasked film.

Masking is not something, where you just add another layer or one more ingredient to an existing one. If they want masking, they'd need to come up with an entire set of new dye couplers, and a much more complicated one, too. Isn't it a bit late in the game to change the dye couplers? Anti halation makes a lot more sense, since it's just another layer, although even that may be hard if they are constrained for max number of layers ...

And all that just to make some measurebators happy, and to break the character of this film?

Rudi, I think the biggest mistake that various people on this thread are making is thinking that they know more about the product than the people who made it and who have literally stated that their next job is to deal with the mask and anti-halation. I don't think they are naive (compared to various crowing commentators on here) about the chemistry or materials in question.

 

[warden]

It does look like some of the example images posted so far were professionally processed and scanned before Harman's scanning parameters were available or understood, as shown in Matt Marash's video. It'll be good to see how the film does once the labs start dialing it all in. In the meantime amateurs seem to be getting better results than the pro labs.

 

[albireo]

Congratulations Harman on an incredible achievement.

Film photography is alive and well and that's thanks to people like you!

I will be supporting this project in any way I can.

 

[Ten301]

Maybe I’m old school, but when did it become the norm to release your R&D ‘failures’ for profit to fund future R&D? In my mind, a respected company such as Harman has taken a hit for putting out such an inferior product. Even Adox, while claiming Color Mission was a step to a final product, released a very polished step, that could actually stand on its own, albeit slightly grainy.

I’ve always placed Harman up there in the top tier with Kodak and Fuji. Would they have put out something before it was perfected, even with claims of “Isn’t this cool?”, “Isn’t this funky?” or “Temper your expectations and have fun!”. No. So no thank you, I can buy a roll of far superior Gold or Fuji for less than the price of Phoenix.

 

[Brad Deputy]

Oh wow. Please share those Negafix profiles when you get that done. I would appreciate that so much!

They would only work if you also had a Plustek 8100 8200, and you may need the AI version, but I'm not certain. As long as you can pick film(s) from the negafix profiles that should be sufficient I hope.
I generate them for color temps 5800k and 8000K (full sun and shade here in PNW).

 

[LeoniD]

Maybe I’m old school, but when did it become the norm to release your R&D ‘failures’ for profit to fund future R&D? In my mind, A respected company such as Harman has taken a hit for putting out such an inferior product. Even Adox, while claiming Color Mission was a step to a final product, released a very polished step, that could actually stand on its own, albeit slightly grainy.

I’ve always placed Harmon up there in the top tier with Kodak and Fuji. Would they have put out something before it was perfected, even with clams of “Isn’t this cool?” or “Isn’t this Funky?” No. So no thank you, I can buy a roll of far superior Gold or Fuji for less than the price of Phoenix.

I wouldn't be so harsh. Kodak and Fuji are pretty much unbeatable in terms of technical specs. Only Agfa could compete, but it is no more. Phoenix seems to be a solid film by 1970-80s standards-it actually has color, it looks good, unlike NC, and it probably has good contrast if we disregard what marketing specialists say. For the first color film-noone could do better, not even Agfa or Kodak. The only thing that I don't really like is halation. Maybe they've run out of layers, maybe they didn't want their film to look like Shrek (early agfacolor and derivatives like DS 1 and DS 2 had a green dye in the layer on the other side of the support for anti-halation), maybe that dye is no longer allowed to be used, but it's a minor inconvenience and 100% will be fixed in the later versions. Even the green sensibilisation quirk that causes red->orangeish red shift (or maybe it's just the scans, idk) is completely forgivable since the entirety of soviet photo/chemistry industry couldn't fix it until like 1986-9, there's no way Harman could fix it in just 1 year. Plus I actually like this effect and I'll be real sad when they fix it further iterations ^-^