Harman Photo cryptic announcement/teaser

I looked at a couple places selling film in Australia, no Harman. The prices are so crazy high 53 AUD for 1 roll of Ektachrome, just for the film, that includes the tax. Color negative films aren't much cheaper. Stinks.

analogwisdom said:

I'm not sure about C200, but I know for certain that Fujicolor 100, Superia Premium 400, and Superia X-TRA 400 all have. Boxes with a 2026-03 expiration date from all 3 of those films have shown up in the last week online.

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What's the difference between Superia Premium 400 and Superia Xtra 400. I know the Xtra 400 used to have the fourth color layer, but I think Fuji stopped making films with that several years ago.

Lachlan Young said:

the couplers used for masking "have visual colour before the film is exposed" - their effect will be to tamp down the two spectral sensitivity spikes you see in the data sheet as they are incorporated in the green & red sensitive layers

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OK, thanks. Given how muted the colors of unprocessed couplers are, I wonder if it'll really tamper those peaks as much. If you look at fresh emulsion, its color is really very faint. No doubt it does *something* to the color response, but not a whole lot.

@LeoniD you showed this picture and said something about spectral sensitivity. I'm wondering what we're looking at here. It appears to be a spectrum viewed through a piece of (processed?) film. As such, it seems more like a spectral density approximation to me. Am I mistaken?

chriscrawfordphoto said:

What's the difference between Superia Premium 400 and Superia Xtra 400.

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Superia Premium is a Japan only version of X-TRA. They are almost exactly the same, except for red sensitivity, which is slightly adjusted for better reproduction of Japanese skin tones.

chriscrawfordphoto said:

I know the Xtra 400 used to have the fourth color layer, but I think Fuji stopped making films with that several years ago.

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Superia dropped the 4th color layer around 2009 I believe. The last films to use it (Pro 160NS and 400H) were discontinued in 2021.

Henning Serger said:

Harman is going a "cautious, conservative" approach and using the existing coating head with max. slots for this project.
Then multiple passes are needed. Disadvantage of that approach: Needs more time, has higher production costs.

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Sounds plausible they're using the existing coating head.
But looking at the current performance of the film, it looks like a single dye-forming layer per color, which makes me wonder if it might be coated in a single pass with a head that can coat up to 6 layers.

This brings the question how they'll handle a more advanced product in the future. Will they opt for the route to sacrifice coating capacity by double coating? Or will they add a head - and the necessary emulsion lines & tanks? I don't know how they've laid out that coating facility - do they have the holding tanks and feed lines running to the coating room so that they can actually use a coater with more layers?

In any case, it sounds to me like they're currently still pushing those decisions ahead of them.

Thread locked - for moderator re-organizing into pre and post announcement threads.

Moderators Note:
We have elected to close this thread now, because most of the content reflects the pre-announcement speculation.
A large number of the posts have now been moved to the new, post-announcement thread that deals with the new Harman Pheonix film.
That thread can be found here: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/first-roll-of-harman-phoenix-photos-up.203317/#post-2746967
That thread has been temporarily closed, but will soon be re-opened.