Harman Photo cryptic announcement/teaser

Agulliver · Nov 23, 2023

cerber0s said:
Yes but look at the range of films that are considered good enough (as in a lot of people will by them) now. It would have to be pretty crappy to miss that mark.

A lot of the films with obvious faults are bought by users who wish to utilise those "faults" for artistic reasons. The "special effect" films. It's not my thing, but I'm not about to diss those who practise this "art"...and I've seen some genuinely fascinating results from it.

Whereas this Harman Phoenix film will have, at least, to perform adequately as a standard colour film. Where @koraks and I made the mistake was assuming that Harman would not launch something unless they could equal the very best. But it doesn't have to be Superia, or Gold or even Color Plus. It has to be Color Mission or Solaris. Heck, if they can offer a price break compared to Gold/Color Plus and a film a little better than Color Mission then I am all in for my holiday photography. I might even go back to shooting more everyday stuff on colour film.

Supercine · Nov 23, 2023

Agulliver said:
A lot of the films with obvious faults are bought by users who wish to utilise those "faults" for artistic reasons. The "special effect" films. It's not my thing, but I'm not about to diss those who practise this "art"...and I've seen some genuinely fascinating results from it.

Whereas this Harman Phoenix film will have, at least, to perform adequately as a standard colour film. Where @koraks and I made the mistake was assuming that Harman would not launch something unless they could equal the very best. But it doesn't have to be Superia, or Gold or even Color Plus. It has to be Color Mission or Solaris. Heck, if they can offer a price break compared to Gold/Color Plus and a film a little better than Color Mission then I am all in for my holiday photography. I might even go back to shooting more everyday stuff on colour film.

If they produce a film as good as the free/own label ones you used to get from the photo lab then they (and us as end users) are onto a winner! The stuff from ORWO wasn’t very good and I doubt that Harman would release something like that. They are a company that seems to listen and quality is paramount.

Lachlan Young · Nov 23, 2023

koraks said:
It is exceedingly fast if that has been the timescale. And we've yet to see how far they've come, if it can reasonably qualified as an 80% achievement, if it means they're working towards something that can truly compete with the consumer c41 films of the past 3 decades and how long that's going to take.

It's a wonderful step in a promising direction. Let's hope it really is an MVP and not just a quasi-functional prototype, the likes of which we've seen from Germany. Although even if it is, it's still a useful step on the way to hopefully something that is a true alternative to e.g. Gold.

Going by Shanebrook, Kodak's cycle by the 1990s was/is 2 years from project start to finished released product (which may not have involved that much basic research) - the point I was making is that Ilford would have been able to make a basically functional C-41 film almost immediately - which if it jumped them 3-6 months ahead on that timescale, would buy them time to resolve interlayers, DIAR couplers, other varied headaches (which are the real time-consumers - as is actually getting what works in research to work on the big machine) - especially if the aim was to get something acceptably good, rather than Portra/ VPS equalling (which in the past would have been the stumbling block, as that would have had to be the aim if they wanted to succeed in the market). If you know where to look, there is an Agfa patent from the 1990s which essentially gives a layer/ component breakdown to very granular level (components at 7g/ 500kg emulsion) - in other words, a 1990s consumer C-41 film requires a few specific/ complex components, but not as many as those which give Portra a 2+ stop speed/ grain/ sharpness advantage - and a lot of R&D effort will have been expended on consumer colour materials in the past to make them as readily manufacturable (profitable) as possible.

Agulliver · Nov 23, 2023

Supercine said:
If they produce a film as good as the free/own label ones you used to get from the photo lab then they (and us as end users) are onto a winner! The stuff from ORWO wasn’t very good and I doubt that Harman would release something like that. They are a company that seems to listen and quality is paramount.

That's where I am. The "buy D&P, get a free film" was usually Ferrania Solaris or Kodacolor VR (=Color Plus) in the early 2000s when such deals began to fade away. At least in Europe that's the case. Those films do not represent the pinnacle of C41 film quality, but they were sufficiently good for millions of happy customers. I used the Ferrania Solaris 200 a lot as a general "snapshot" film. As long as you weren't trying to under expose more than a stop, and weren't trying to blow it up to A4 sized prints it was fine.

The samples I saw online from the recent ORWO were not hopeless but not something that was close to being ready for consumers. Adox Color Mission is close. If Harman can equal that, or better it, they are absolutely onto a winner. And hopefully it will fund improvements so that next time we're discussing a big announcement from Harman it's "Phoenix 2.0" which *is* as good as Kodak.

Steve Goldstein · Nov 23, 2023

1200+ speculative/wishful posts about possible Ilford film products. Maybe they'll fool you all and come out with a camera

MultiFormat Shooter · Nov 23, 2023

Steve Goldstein said:
Maybe they'll fool you all and come out with a camera

If it were a film version of a Nikon D6, I'd be totally fine with that.

Supercine said:
If they produce a film as good as the free/own label ones you used to get from the photo lab then they (and us as end users) are onto a winner! The stuff from ORWO wasn’t very good and I doubt that Harman would release something like that. They are a company that seems to listen and quality is paramount.

With all the hype around they're generating around this product, you'd think Harman created something objectively better than Portra (i.e finer grain and better hue separation in oranges/yellows/reds, while still retaining "pleasing skin tones").

mshchem · Nov 23, 2023

koraks · Nov 23, 2023

Lachlan Young said:
the point I was making is that Ilford would have been able to make a basically functional C-41 film almost immediately

Does this mean you expect the present product to be on par with the color C41 still film offering of Kodak? Because Harman seem to be a bit cautious in the text they put inside the box:

We are very proud of what we have achieved with this film but it is also our first step into the world of colour.

Our aim is that each new colour film we produce will be an improvement on the previous.

That sounds more like a "we're doing the Inoviscoat dance for a bit" than "we struck Gold today and will move up to Ektar tomorrow".

Apparently it's not all as simple as shopping for some couplers here and pasting an interlayer or two there.

They also hint at future investments in coating capabilities, which I suspect means as much that they are coating the present color product on the existing B&W lines, which means multiple coating runs for a decent color product or a very simple layer stack (with limited performance, let's put it gently) that can be coated in a single pass. Given the possible example image that appeared earlier in this thread, I wouldn't be surprised if they opted for the latter for now, which would result in a 'vintage' color rendition.

bfilm · Nov 23, 2023

koraks said:
Given the possible example image that appeared earlier in this thread, I wouldn't be surprised if they opted for the latter for now, which would result in a 'vintage' color rendition.

That wasn't vintage color rendition. It was just wrong color rendition. I hope that is not representative of this new film, even if it is just a steppingstone to nicer films.

Lachlan Young · Nov 23, 2023

koraks said:
Does this mean you expect the present product to be on par with the color C41 still film offering of Kodak? Because Harman seem to be a bit cautious in the text they put inside the box:

No, not at all - what I am saying is that you seem to be intent on implying that it would take 5-10 years R&D to make any acceptable C-41 film - which I think is utterly incorrect for a company that is not going from a standing start into C-41. 18 months to a viable product (not Portra/ Ektar/ NPS/ Optima, but Colour Mission or 90s consumer) is perfectly feasible because Ilford have the underlying wherewithal (i.e. material and technical resources) that are essential for turning external know-how into a meaningful product. 10 years would have been the case for some materials where large amounts of basic research were needed (e.g. the advent of DIR couplers, or bringing high-aspect ratio crystal structures to manufacturable form etc), but this is very much the application of extant internal knowledge, integrated by external knowledge into a new product.

brbo · Nov 23, 2023

koraks said:
They also hint at future investments in coating capabilities, which I suspect means as much that they are coating the present color product on the existing B&W lines, which means multiple coating runs for a decent color product or a very simple layer stack (with limited performance, let's put it gently) that can be coated in a single pass.

Anyone brave enough to guess how much free coating capabilities Harman has? If they are in fact doing multiple passes for Phoenix do they have enough capacity to produce all their BW and new colour material in meaningful quantities. Cause, man, as much as I like Color Mission I also hate the way Adox is releasing it to customers. I can understand it, but I hate it anyway.

Lachlan Young · Nov 23, 2023

brbo said:
Anyone brave enough to guess how much free coating capabilities Harman has? If they are in fact doing multiple passes for Phoenix do they have enough capacity to produce all their BW and new colour material in meaningful quantities. Cause, man, as much as I like Color Mission I also hate the way Adox is releasing it to customers. I can understand it, but I hate it anyway.

Ilford could (would prefer to) run M14 24/7, it's nowhere close to that - even if the colour needs 2 passes. The bottleneck will be conversion capacity.

pentaxpete · Nov 23, 2023

On YouTube there is a Video which says Harman is bringing out COLOUR FILM .....

BrianShaw · Nov 23, 2023

pentaxpete said:
On YouTube there is a Video which says Harman is bringing out COLOUR FILM .....

There are a couple, and they are doing exactly what is being done in this thread: reading tea leaves and making educated guesses. No additional insider knowledge that I saw.

BrianShaw · Nov 23, 2023

bfilm said:
That wasn't vintage color rendition. It was just wrong color rendition. I hope that is not representative of this new film, even if it is just a steppingstone to nicer films.

That’s when I started losing a bit of faith. Hopefully that’s not representative!

Overrank · Nov 23, 2023

BrianShaw said:
There are a couple, and they are doing exactly what is being done in this thread: reading tea leaves and making educated guesses. No additional insider knowledge that I saw.

There have been photos published of the box (and now removed)

BrianShaw · Nov 23, 2023

Overrank said:
There have been photos published of the box (and now removed)

I stand corrected. Yes, there were. I saw them too. That was quite possibly real insider knowledge. Many others, though, are just speculating and looking for hits.

brbo · Nov 23, 2023

Lachlan Young said:
Ilford could (would prefer to) run M14 24/7, it's nowhere close to that - even if the colour needs 2 passes. The bottleneck will be conversion capacity.

Great!

I know this won’t go down well with BW folks, but if Phoenix is any good, Harman can still prioritize Phoenix to Kentmere and Acros on converting lines. But since both won’t make that big an impact considering demand for colour film is much stronger than BW they would absolutely kill it if they offered Phoenix in bulk rolls with tiny savings for end customer. They would actually make more money on film, keep the coater running, users busy on winter evenings and keep that cassettes out of the trash.

That’s a win win win win!

koraks · Nov 23, 2023

Lachlan Young said:
you seem to be intent on implying that it would take 5-10 years R&D to make any acceptable C-41 film

Assuming they initiated this about 3 years ago (which seems like a reasonable guess; note [1]) and they're now at roughly Inoviscoat level, another 2 years for an acceptable (subjective, of course; note [2]) C41 film sounds realistically optimistic. That makes 5 years. They'd be quick if they managed that, which, for the reasons you offer, may yet be feasible.

The distance between our estimates seems to derive mostly from your 18 months, which I don't think are a realistic estimate of how long they've been working on this, and on my end the fact that I also didn't realize how long this must have been in the making. I assumed they would have upgraded their coating capacity at an earlier stage, but it looks like they're pushing that backwards as far as they can. Which seems a sensible approach, business-wise.

[1] Estimate based on hires of personnel >2 years ago, which would have occurred at a stage where this project had been initiated but still at an early stage.
[2] By this, I mean at the level of where consumer-level color negative films of F & K were at around 1990. Note that Color Mission is still not quite at that level.

Also, I'm not "intent" on anything. I reflect freely on what I hear and read, based on what I know. Insofar as I'm "intent" on anything, it's being transparent about what I think. It seems you're doing the same, aren't you?

Supercine · Nov 23, 2023

brbo said:
Great!

I know this won’t go down well with BW folks, but if Phoenix is any good, Harman can still prioritize Phoenix to Kentmere and Acros on converting lines. But since both won’t make that big an impact considering demand for colour film is much stronger than BW they would absolutely kill it if they offered Phoenix in bulk rolls with tiny savings for end customer. They would actually make more money on film, keep the coater running, users busy on winter evenings and keep that cassettes out of the trash.

That’s a win win win win!

Ilford (Harman) do, tend to do all their film stocks in bulk. So the new one, in theory, should be no different. This would be something very new to the current colour film market!

pentaxuser · Nov 23, 2023

koraks said:
Assuming they initiated this about 3 years ago (which seems like a reasonable guess; note [1]) and they're now at roughly Inoviscoat level, another 2 years for an acceptable (subjective, of course; note [2]) C41 film sounds realistically optimistic. That makes 5 years. They'd be quick if they managed that, which, for the reasons you offer, may yet be feasible.

What is the evidence as to when they might have started a colour film project. Could it not have been a lot more than 3 years ago?

Thanks

pentaxuser

Nopo · Nov 23, 2023

Some people seem to have forgotten that we had a worldwide shutdown that lasted almost two years.
So realistically this must have started in 2018.

Carlos

Minolta93 · Nov 23, 2023

Lachlan Young said:
Ilford could (would prefer to) run M14 24/7, it's nowhere close to that - even if the colour needs 2 passes. The bottleneck will be conversion capacity.

I keep hearing this, and I've heard people suggest that Kodak, for example, release C-41 film as bulk rolls. These people were told (in various threads) that Kodak isn't set up to do that efficiently, but that Ilford's line was better suited to providing bulk rolls to consumers. Given that information, I wonder if Harman would be able to release this new color film to us as 100' bulk rolls, which would help them run their coating line more and basically outsource some of the manufacturing process to the end user who will put it into cassettes for themselves. I would definitely buy a bulk roll of 200ISO color film if the price per roll would end up around $6 or $7. But something closer to $5 would be better, that'd be about $90 for a 100ft. roll.

Lachlan Young · Nov 23, 2023

Minolta93 said:
I keep hearing this, and I've heard people suggest that Kodak, for example, release C-41 film as bulk rolls. These people were told (in various threads) that Kodak isn't set up to do that efficiently, but that Ilford's line was better suited to providing bulk rolls to consumers. Given that information, I wonder if Harman would be able to release this new color film to us as 100' bulk rolls, which would help them run their coating line more and basically outsource some of the manufacturing process to the end user who will put it into cassettes for themselves. I would definitely buy a bulk roll of 200ISO color film if the price per roll would end up around $6 or $7. But something closer to $5 would be better, that'd be about $90 for a 100ft. roll.

Ilford have effectively said in the past that bulk rolls are offered at a price that is barely profitable but that there is a very small but 'dedicated' [read disproportionately loud on forums/ social media to actual IRL size] market that is worth serving. Finished 135 roll packaging is highly automated/ efficient and minimises QC issues which people can blame the manufacturer for, as opposed to the often messy results I've seen from bulk loading.

And, more importantly, all bulk rolls need slit, perfed and edge signed - same as packaged rolls. It may well be slitting or perfing capacity that's the limiting factor, not stuffing canisters.

Craig · Nov 23, 2023

I would expect a bigger issue with bulk rolled C41 is processing. Even back in the heyday of film, many labs wouldn't touch home rolled films. If Harman also released C41 processing kits, that would be a major step.

Harman Photo cryptic announcement/teaser

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Harman Photo cryptic announcement/teaser

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