Harman Phoenix I & II Colour Film Review

Harman Phoenix 200 I & II is the first colour-negative film to come from the UK’s famously black-and-white film factory (better known as Ilford by packaging) since the 1960s.

Based on a long-running black-and-white negative film that can be developed in colour (C-41) chemicals, Phoenix is an experimental product. It shows punchy colours, chunky grain, and other imperfections. But despite the imperfections, this film has been embraced by the community for its unique properties and what it means for the future of film photography.

In this review, I’ll explain where the film and its name comes from, discuss its technical properties, show plenty of samples, and share a few ways that it can be developed like nothing else in the world. Lastly, I’ll describe how the newest iteration, Phoenix II (sold in blue boxes), compares to the original 2024 launch, Phoenix 200 (sold in orange boxes).In this review: Like nothing else in the world. Harman Phoenix colours. Developing Harman Phoenix 200 as a slide film. Grain, resolution, sharpness. Dynamic range. Scanning Phoenix 200. Harman Phoenix II vs. ORWO NC200. Harman Phoenix price and availability. Support this blog & get premium features with GOLD memberships!

Thank you, Lily Li Hua (Instagram: @lilianlihua), for modelling!

Like nothing else in the world.

Film photography is in a renaissance. New cameras and new film are launching every month in an attempt to meet the growing demand of new and seasoned analogue enthusiasts.

Alas, film photography remains under threat as Kodak, the largest producer of photographic film, remains on an unstable financial footing. Meanwhile, Fujifilm, its former blood rival, no longer makes colour-negative film.

Colour-negative film is a very complex product to manufacture. Up until recently, Kodak and Fujifilm were the only two companies with factories that could produce it. Kodak’s facilities are multi-billion-dollar halls that run miles of film through hundreds of ducts and coating machines.

Today, Kodak makes most colour film in the world. The vast majority of brands that sell it respool, repackage, or modify Kodak film. It’s in the movie theatres, and it’s in most cameras that take colour photos. Because of that fact, there’s virtually no true diversity when it comes to approaches for making this type of film or the results that it may produce; of course, the dangers of it disappearing are immense if Kodak were to fold operations.

Thankfully, two new factories began making colour-negative film recently that aren’t Kodak:

InovisCoat GmbH (better-known as ORWO) makes ISO 400 colour-negative films, which include ORWO NC 500, plus the new films packaged by KONO (Color 200) and Optik OldSchool. Unofficially, they are also responsible for Lomography Lomochrome films and those sold under the Ilford Ilfocolor brand. InovisCoat GmbH  is located in Monheim am Rhein, Germany.

Harman Technology runs the factory of interest to this article that makes colour-negative film in the town of Ilford, UK. They also manufacture all Ilford-branded black-and-white film; however, they license the Ilford brand name from a Swiss company that split from the original Ilford years ago. Because Harman does not have the rights to use the Ilford name on colour-negative films, they distribute their new colour product under the name Harman Phoenix.

Harman Phoenix is not based on Kodak films or even historical IP (as is the case with ORWO films, which are based on legacy Agfa chemistry). Phoenix is a brand-new formulation that uses the technology behind the only black-and-white film that can be developed in C-41: Ilford XP2 Super.

Phoenix is a very new film. Even though it’s made in a large UK facility by people who have extensive experience making photographic film, Ilford (currently, Harman), has been traditionally an exclusively black-and-white manufacturer. Their last attempt to make colour film ended in the 1960s. As such, today’s Harman colour film is an ongoing experiment, constantly adjusted, with improvements added to each new batch of film.

Harman Phoenix II is a recent reformulation of the Phoenix line, which includes significant changes to how the film scans and the colours it renders.

I will be referring to the original 2024 release (orange packaging) as Phoenix 200 and the newest 2025 version (blue packaging) as Phoenix II.

Harman Phoenix colours.

Both Phoenix 200 and Phoenix II render vivid, highly saturated colours with limited accuracy.

Phoenix 200 had some limits to how well it could render the greens, particularly the foliage (it may be hard to differentiate hues, especially in slightly overexposed areas), whereas the new Phoenix II appears incapable of rendering the deep red colour. The II also tends to saturate the blue colours, especially deep blue, very strongly.

That said, either of those films will offer some of the brightest colours you can find today without having to make any adjustments after scanning.

To get the images in this article, I scanned my negatives with Nikon SUPER COOLSCAN 5000ED and inverted them with film Q, an app that makes no adjustments during the process. Several photos here needed some colour correction, which I made using a greyscale reference mask.

Another special property of Phoenix 200 is the halation effect. Halation appears as small bright rings of red light, which are caused by exceptionally bright rays going through the emulsion and then bouncing back to be reabsorbed by the emulsion’s red colour layer. Halation can also make your bright skies and surfaces appear a little redder than the rest of the image.

While both Phoenix 200 and Phoenix II will often render vivid, unusual colours, it’s still possible to get them to look realistic in certain low-contrast scenes, especially when developed as a slide film:

Developing Harman Phoenix 200 as a slide film.

Harman Phoenix 200 uses a clear base for the emulsion, which means it can be developed as a positive in E-6 chemicals. Another way to create slides with this film is to develop it in a hot black-and-white film developer, expose it to light, and then in C-41 chemistry again (a process also known as C-41 reversal).

My experiments developing this film as a slide revealed that, in certain light, exposure, and while using specific development methods, Phoenix 200 can render natural-looking high-contrast colours that need minimal correction and are easy to scan.

When developed as slide film, Phoenix 200 also showed a dramatic reduction in grain.

Grain, resolution, sharpness.

Harman (a.k.a. Ilford) doesn’t share PGI or RMS values for the granularity of Phoenix 200. But if you’re reading this on a large screen or zooming in on the images, you should notice that it’s fairly chunky. In fact, Phoenix 200 grain is perhaps the coarsest out of all the new ISO200 colour emulsions on the market.

This film is based on Ilford XP2 Super black-and-white film, designed for development in C-41 chemicals. XP2’s grain is already fairly noticeable. Perhaps adding colour layers to the film makes that even more apparent.

Phoenix II is promised to have finer grain, although it’s still quite chunky — even in the highlights. While coarse, the grain is very sharp on this film when developed in C-41. This can make certain details look sharper than they are.

All Phoenix films are available in 35mm and 120 formats; if you don’t like grain, try shooting a larger format or developing as a slide — maybe both!

Dynamic range.

Dynamic range is one of the key properties of photographic film. It explains a film’s contrast profile, as well as how easy or difficult it would be to capture a scene on the emulsion in question. A smaller number implies higher contrast and greater difficulties capturing details in shadows/highlights. Dynamic range can be ascertained from film characteristic curves, which provide additional context, such as latitude (i.e., how quickly the details will disappear in shadows/highlights).

Based on the graph that Harmpan provides in their datasheet, Phoenix 200 appears to have around 1.5 lux-seconds (log exposure) of useful density variation. This converts to about five stops of dynamic range.

To put this into context, DR of 5 is comparable to high-contrast slide films like Velvia 50 and Ektachrome E100.

Samples in this review and elsewhere show how contrasty Phoenix 200 can be. Its dynamic range figure not only confirms that but also informs us that it may be a tricky film to expose perfectly.

Phoenix II improves the contrast by about a stop, yielding roughly six stops of dynamic range. However, the improvement may be hard to notice without direct comparisons, as that’s still a low number.

Scanning Phoenix 200.

Phoenix 200 is not like other colour-negative films. Aside from simply being new, which means there are no existing profiles or presets on certain lab scanners, it also has a unique purple colour mask.

Most colour-negative films use an orange mask. The mask simplifies production for the manufacturer by countering chemical impurities. It is a standard way to encode analogue colour image information in a negative since the mid-20th century. Scanners and scanning software that were built around this technology may expect to see some shade of orange — or cause issues with the final results.

Analog.Cafe’s own film inversion software, film Q (which does not alter the colours during the process and openly explains exactly what it does to the image), works well with Phoenix 200 on my scanner. Though you may need some colour corrections after the fact, it’s generally good to go out-of-the-box. Phoenix II, on the other hand, can often cause the colours to turn yellow, which should be corrected after scanning. Alternatively, you can try inverting your film negatives manually.

Harman knows that their film is hard to scan. Which is why they’ve included a lengthy section on scanning in their datasheets. These instructions differ between Phoenix 200 and Phoenix II. If you plan to have your scan at a lab, make sure you let them know about these recommendations.

Datasheet for Harman Phoenix 200 (with scanning instructions).

Datasheet for Harman Phoenix II (with scanning instructions).

Harman Phoenix II vs. ORWO NC200.

There are only two colour-negative film lines in production today, other than those manufactured by Kodak. In this article, I compare them side-by-side to see which of these formulas is closer to replacing Kodak’s legacy of innovation and excellence in colour photochemistry:

“Comparing Two Newest Colour Films: Phoenix vs. NC200.”

Harman Phoenix price and availability.

Phoenix 200 currently sells between $12 and $22 per roll of 36exp. I’ve seen it being sold in the US, Canada, and the UK at popular and lesser-known shops. It shouldn’t be too much trouble for you to find yourself a roll, as Harman’s existing distribution for Ilford-branded films works well for Phoenix.

❤ By the way: Please consider making your Harman Phoenix 200 using this link  so that this website may get a small percentage of that sale — at no extra charge for you — thanks!