Harman rebrands its Phoenix colour-negative film, adds tweaks, and resets ISO to 125.
When the film was first released, the manufacturer shared their calculated rating of the emulsion: ISO 123.5¹. However, their community testers suggested rating it at ISO 200 instead, which is what went onto the box. Today, Harman, best known for their Ilford-branded black-and-white films², is rolling that decision back, along with some tweaks to the emulsion and the box design.
Harman Phoenix films are based on the company’s well-known black-and-white film, Ilford XP2 Super³, designed to work with C-41 chemistry during development. The black-and-white film’s characteristic purple base can be recognized on Phoenix colour films as well—but turning it into colour is not easy. This is the first colour-negative film project made at the UK factory since the 1960s (and I must say that today’s Phoenix is a lot more successful than their earlier efforts).
The difficulties with creating a completely new colour chemistry include a narrow dynamic range⁴ of about five stops — similar to what you’d expect from a slide film⁵. This can make it difficult to shoot in high-contrast scenes⁶ and even cause blown-out highlights during slight overexposure. This may have been why the photographers who initially tested the film suggested giving it less light by rating it as ISO 200⁷.
However, Harman said on numerous occasions that they continuously work on their Phoenix emulsions, adding tweaks to virtually every new batch that leaves the factory. The obvious changes to this new version of the film are the box, presumably the DX code (a code for point-and-shoot cameras), and changes to the emulsion itself, which — hopefully — give it a bit more exposure latitude in the highlights so that the film could be safely exposed at the speed it is scientifically measured to perform best at: ISO 125.
The new boxes with updated emulsion should be arriving at your favourite photography shops shortly.
You can track the price of this film and compare against the market average (to avoid being overcharged!) here: analog.cafe/app/film-price….
Update: Harman confirmed that the new boxes contain tweaked Phoenix I emulsion, which means we’ll be able to develop it as a slide film (analog.cafe/r/harman-phoen…), turn it into a redscale, or expect results similar to the original product they released in December 2023.
Dmitri
Dmitri