I just got my first roll of Phoenix 200 back from the lab and scanned it with a Plustek OpticFilm 8200i and converted with NLP. The results were similar to yours. The reds tend to go a little bit orange as well as bright yellows. I found that shooting it in subdued light tones down the contrast, and yes, the grain is noticeable but not objectionable. All in all, I applaud Harman / Ilford for building a new film from the ground up and am waiting for version 2.0.
I have shot mine at ISO125 in a cloudy day, scanned using Laowa 100mm macro and JJC, converted using NLP. Great contrast, high saturation, strong halation, beautiful blues and greens.
Amateur here. I just shot my first roll of this a couple of weeks ago. I was using a Canon AE-1 Program. It was a bright day so I left the shutter at 1/500 the whole time and adjusted the aperture when I needed to. In all honesty, it was super grainy. I thought I'd be fine with that but it was so grainy that I wondered if I was doing something wrong (camera shake and the like). Then the next roll I shot was Kodak Gold and had no weird issues on that one. I do like the high color saturation on Harman Phoenix but that grain is HEAVY.
This a great review! I would NEVER have considered shooting this or any of these new “lomo” type incarnations but youve actually changed my mind. One of the best film reviews ive seen.
Great review! I still need to shoot the roll I bought when it was announced and make a video about it haha! The shot at 7:48 of the smoke? fog? mist? coming through the trees looks amazing!
This is one of many reasons why I shoot slide film (even though it's expensive). If I'm really happy with my slide, then I try to make the scan closely match what I see on my light table. There's really no question about what it "should look like". If I'm less happy with it, but it looks salvageable, then I fix it as much as I can.
I would argue that the way it "should look like" depends from what stock you're using, stuff like Ektachrome looks colder because it's meant to counteract the colour temperature of slide projector lamps, even ones with a color correction filter will add warmth to what's projected and that's where slide film looks the best to me. At least that's the pattern I've recognized and I've been shooting slides since 2017, stuff like Provia looks ok even on the light table but there's no question that these emulsions had halogen light projection in mind.
I only ever home scanned phoenix, and in general I think it gives good/accurate colours, if quite saturated. Conditions are everything, by far my best results were on cloudy days, genuinely feels like 3 stops is hitting the limit (though I don't always mind the crushed shadows).
Great review Hashem, thanks. I'm traveling in Italy, enjoying the amazing & bright end of summer sunshine .. I bought a couple of rolls yesterday - should have done some research first - I think they'll have to wait until the light starts to change into Autumn.
Great video! On my roll I shot high contrast day time and then flash with it at night. Day was horrible, night was amazing! Loved the greens and pinkish reds that worked well with a little motion blur/drag+flash. To me, the only reason I would ever shoot this again is for flash at night. Otherwise, I cant see myself shooting it again when I already have a dedicated night film, Fujicolor 100.
I keep some around for when I want that look. Just like I have some Redscale and Metropolis for their looks. But I'm looking forward to Harman developing color film until we can debate the merits of Harman vs. Kodak the way we can HP5+ vs. Tri-X.
Hasham thanks for this, its good to see tests performed after the initial release on anything, well after the hype/bashing is over some more thoughtful/experimentally minded people have been exposed to the product.
The highlight blooming is a little bit interesting on this film. As a whole, the film seems to be almost a little bit unstable or unpredictable. The colors are really nice, though, and I could see this film being a great asset to really enhance those warm tones in more muted or flat scenes.
Thanks for this review, Hashem! I really haven't watched much about it before, because, like you, I tend to like predictability in what I shoot. But I do tend to enjoy some experimentation from time to time! You got some great shots in here, and some lovely warm tones
@@pushingfilm I probably won't try this one for a while, because I mostly shoot medium format. My recent experiments tend to be trying to replicate a faux Aerochrome look with stacking scanned images from IR film haha.
After getting a Noritsu and frontier I have to say that I probably won’t go back to DSLR scanning, but with Phoenix, I didn’t really get a good outcome with either scanner. The only decent results I’ve seen with this film are with DSLR scanning with Kyle’s and now yours. Nice photos! One of my favourite styles of film photos are the ones that are high contrast like yours in this video with sun beaming on a section in the image and the rest shadows. It’s a shame you can’t do that with this film as much.
awesome video!! and really love those sun soaked images with the shadow fall off (especially the van trip ones!)...wish they had rated the film at 125 instead of 200 from the beginning, but I'd shoot this again knowing now how better to work with it :) My images were Frontier scanned and its wild what a difference the scanning makes!
Noritsu scanner at Irohas Melbourne is giving me much better scans than other labs I used in the past who are using Frontier scanners. I do rescan at home and even better with my cheap Kodak scanner than Frontier
As a minilab operator using Noritsu system, I think you can only get the best of Phoenix 200 by either darkroom print or household flatbed scan with auto colour adjustment. The missing of orange mask makes this film does not get correct colour with minilab scanners, but also make it able to be processed by either E-6 (at E.I. 50) or ECN-2. The case is similar to OROW NC400 / NC500. Although it's still a long way from producing a standard colour negative film, we should appreciate HARMAN to invest on a brand new colour emulsion, and the promise of ongoing improvement. Brand new film cameras like Pentax 17 and Mint Rollei 35AF are also important to the film photography market, no matter these cameras are your cup of tea or not, they are gambling on the future of film photography and need a good sales figure to shows they are right.
I don't see why anyone should WANT them to make a "standard" film. We don't need orange masks anymore, 0.01% of people shooting this stuff make color darkroom prints, it could be relegated to a single one or two niche products, and we could move on to clear stocks for almost all film. And/or minilab scanners better able to work with that. They're SO much better for scanning in other ways, which is more popular now. And they should similarly be better for minilabs of the future if they don't require orange masks. A mask objectively reduces the signal density and slightly reduces dynamic range.
@@gavinjenkins899I'm on board with them leaving the clear base, and agree with the advantages you mentioned. If they can just increase lattitude and decrease grain, we'd have a great next iteration.
Does this film have any anti halation layer? The orange glow around the highlights indicates that it may not have, which explains some of the ills that this film displays.
Hi man. Love ur sharing and thoughts of the HPhoenix200 film. You mentioned here u shot most of the the pics at ASA100 or ASA125 yah. Just wondering do you developed it at ASA100/125 or at boxspeed(200)?
I shot my first roll of Phoenix on landscapes and basically bushwalking type shots and that was a big mistake - too much detail to try and capture with the chunky grain, and too much dynamic range for the emulsion’s limited latitude to handle. My lab’s Frontier scans looked like hot trash, DSLR scanning brought back some level of detail and dynamic range, but still not great. As the film stands now it’s best treated like slide film in terms of dynamic range, and on bold shapes and lower detail subjects where the grain isn’t struggling to reproduce finer elements. I’ve seen some excellent results with street and portraiture work,l that seems to bring out the best in the film. Theres another roll sitting in my fridge awaiting its turn, I reckon I’ll do a portraiture series with it and see how that goes. Phoenix isn’t perfect but it’s still bloody awesome to have, and can only get better as Iford/Harman work with the formula.
To me it Looks like a „beta-version“ of a film if i can say so. I will treat it like an Ilford 50 and use fill flash all the time to reduce Contrast especially with Portraits . After I‘ve seen your video I will give it a try.
If Phoenix 200 came from some no-name producer in Eastern Europe, given its many lackluster characteristics, it would have been laughed at for a few weeks and then consigned to the YT garbage bin. That it comes from Harmon/Ilford does not justify a different treatment. Apart from its lack of color fidelity and excessive contrast, the reason it's hard to scan is that scanners come programmed to scan C-41 specification film, which means a color mask required for traditional darkroom chemical paper printing. Phoenix 200 lacks such a mask, which throws off lab (and personal) scanners. Harmon acknowledged this problem from the first day, and it offered programming adjustments to allow such scanners to cope with their new film. That many labs don't care to make allowances for one, low volume film brand is understandable, and it is not worthy of a YT video. If Phoenix 200 is the future of film, we're all going to be shooting digital in the foreseeable future.
It is my favorite color film by a mile. Portra by comparison is washed out muddy blah. Phoenix is beautiful when used correctly (which it isn't in this video for the exact reasons he states: high contrast harsh sun. Not really a good time to shoot ANY photography). Color darkroom printing: lol, I'm sure all 7 people who do that will be so disappointed. Personal scanners: no, it makes personal scanning way easier. You can put in far less correction and get more range out of the film and do it all in camera or in scanner, without software passes of correction after. In this case, the latitude is low to begin with so an extra stop of range still = low range, but if a competitively high latitude film with no mask could get the highest range of all. Or does, already -- see: aerocolor. Labs being too lazy to figure out a setting for their machines for an hour once every 5 years when a new coloremulsion comes out: quadruple lol. Found the lab tech with no work ethic in the comments! Not being able to spend 0.1% of your time every several years to stay up to date is plain embarassing and shameful, no other word for any lab that disrespects their own job and role.
I just got my first roll of Phoenix 200 back from the lab and scanned it with a Plustek OpticFilm 8200i and converted with NLP. The results were similar to yours. The reds tend to go a little bit orange as well as bright yellows. I found that shooting it in subdued light tones down the contrast, and yes, the grain is noticeable but not objectionable. All in all, I applaud Harman / Ilford for building a new film from the ground up and am waiting for version 2.0.
Applaud warranted! I hope the sales and feedback on it prompt them to continue development.
I have shot mine at ISO125 in a cloudy day, scanned using Laowa 100mm macro and JJC, converted using NLP. Great contrast, high saturation, strong halation, beautiful blues and greens.
Shot a roll of this film last week with my Olympus OM-1, without any clue of how to shoot it optimality. Will be exciting to see the results!
Nice, good luck!
Amateur here. I just shot my first roll of this a couple of weeks ago. I was using a Canon AE-1 Program. It was a bright day so I left the shutter at 1/500 the whole time and adjusted the aperture when I needed to. In all honesty, it was super grainy. I thought I'd be fine with that but it was so grainy that I wondered if I was doing something wrong (camera shake and the like). Then the next roll I shot was Kodak Gold and had no weird issues on that one. I do like the high color saturation on Harman Phoenix but that grain is HEAVY.
This a great review! I would NEVER have considered shooting this or any of these new “lomo” type incarnations but youve actually changed my mind. One of the best film reviews ive seen.
Hey, thanks so much! I almost wasnt going to make this review because I saw so many out there... But hearing this makes me glad I did.
Great review! I still need to shoot the roll I bought when it was announced and make a video about it haha! The shot at 7:48 of the smoke? fog? mist? coming through the trees looks amazing!
Thanks man! It was smoke... a farmer was doing controlled burns on his property to prevent future bushfires.
This is one of many reasons why I shoot slide film (even though it's expensive). If I'm really happy with my slide, then I try to make the scan closely match what I see on my light table. There's really no question about what it "should look like". If I'm less happy with it, but it looks salvageable, then I fix it as much as I can.
I would argue that the way it "should look like" depends from what stock you're using, stuff like Ektachrome looks colder because it's meant to counteract the colour temperature of slide projector lamps, even ones with a color correction filter will add warmth to what's projected and that's where slide film looks the best to me. At least that's the pattern I've recognized and I've been shooting slides since 2017, stuff like Provia looks ok even on the light table but there's no question that these emulsions had halogen light projection in mind.
I only ever home scanned phoenix, and in general I think it gives good/accurate colours, if quite saturated. Conditions are everything, by far my best results were on cloudy days, genuinely feels like 3 stops is hitting the limit (though I don't always mind the crushed shadows).
Great review Hashem, thanks.
I'm traveling in Italy, enjoying the amazing & bright end of summer sunshine .. I bought a couple of rolls yesterday - should have done some research first - I think they'll have to wait until the light starts to change into Autumn.
Thanks for watching :-) Yeah that might be better, hope you have a good trip!
@@pushingfilm first roll back - I don't know what scanner the lab used - it's not really for me. I don't like the shadows & saturation.
Gonna test mine soon too. And gonna scan them with Frontier SP500 both with the default settings and the settings provided by Harman for the film.
Great video! On my roll I shot high contrast day time and then flash with it at night. Day was horrible, night was amazing! Loved the greens and pinkish reds that worked well with a little motion blur/drag+flash. To me, the only reason I would ever shoot this again is for flash at night. Otherwise, I cant see myself shooting it again when I already have a dedicated night film, Fujicolor 100.
Thanks man. Yeah it's certainly a finicky film... Even more than Velvia and such 😅
Damn this looks so much better than the initial reviews! And I quite like the grain. I wouldn't shoot it all the time, but it can produce a nice vibe.
Caleb from Bad Flashes actually pulled his film in his video and personally, I really enjoyed the results of those.
Nice, pulling might actually tame the contrast with this one
@@pushingfilm Not the point of the convo, but your color correcting video just saved my life. Thank you so much for showing how to save film scans!
@@coreymagz3145 Glad to hear that! Thanks man
I keep some around for when I want that look. Just like I have some Redscale and Metropolis for their looks. But I'm looking forward to Harman developing color film until we can debate the merits of Harman vs. Kodak the way we can HP5+ vs. Tri-X.
Hasham thanks for this, its good to see tests performed after the initial release on anything, well after the hype/bashing is over some more thoughtful/experimentally minded people have been exposed to the product.
expose those brighter shots at box speed, everything else at 100? Wonder how well it pushes..
Outstanding update Hasham. To be honest, I waited for your take on the film. Much appreciated.
Thanks so much!
The highlight blooming is a little bit interesting on this film. As a whole, the film seems to be almost a little bit unstable or unpredictable. The colors are really nice, though, and I could see this film being a great asset to really enhance those warm tones in more muted or flat scenes.
Thanks for this review, Hashem! I really haven't watched much about it before, because, like you, I tend to like predictability in what I shoot. But I do tend to enjoy some experimentation from time to time!
You got some great shots in here, and some lovely warm tones
Hey, glad you liked it! Yeah it's fun to try these kind of stocks here and there.
@@pushingfilm I probably won't try this one for a while, because I mostly shoot medium format. My recent experiments tend to be trying to replicate a faux Aerochrome look with stacking scanned images from IR film haha.
@@MeasuredLight Sounds like fun 😁
@pushingfilm it is! Expensive, though 🤣🤣
After getting a Noritsu and frontier I have to say that I probably won’t go back to DSLR scanning, but with Phoenix, I didn’t really get a good outcome with either scanner. The only decent results I’ve seen with this film are with DSLR scanning with Kyle’s and now yours. Nice photos!
One of my favourite styles of film photos are the ones that are high contrast like yours in this video with sun beaming on a section in the image and the rest shadows. It’s a shame you can’t do that with this film as much.
Yeah I guess this a rare exception because of the film base. Thanks man 😁👍
awesome video!! and really love those sun soaked images with the shadow fall off (especially the van trip ones!)...wish they had rated the film at 125 instead of 200 from the beginning, but I'd shoot this again knowing now how better to work with it :) My images were Frontier scanned and its wild what a difference the scanning makes!
Hey Molly, thanks so much! I agree, that would have given cleaner results for all the launch testers 😄
Nice video, and I love the colour palette.
Noritsu scanner at Irohas Melbourne is giving me much better scans than other labs I used in the past who are using Frontier scanners. I do rescan at home and even better with my cheap Kodak scanner than Frontier
Good to hear 👌
Great video!
Thanks!
I was hoping it was going to be cheaper in the UK due to it being fucking manufactured here. We need bulk rolls
As a minilab operator using Noritsu system, I think you can only get the best of Phoenix 200 by either darkroom print or household flatbed scan with auto colour adjustment. The missing of orange mask makes this film does not get correct colour with minilab scanners, but also make it able to be processed by either E-6 (at E.I. 50) or ECN-2. The case is similar to OROW NC400 / NC500. Although it's still a long way from producing a standard colour negative film, we should appreciate HARMAN to invest on a brand new colour emulsion, and the promise of ongoing improvement.
Brand new film cameras like Pentax 17 and Mint Rollei 35AF are also important to the film photography market, no matter these cameras are your cup of tea or not, they are gambling on the future of film photography and need a good sales figure to shows they are right.
Agreed! Excited to see what they do next (assuming they don't bail 😅)
I don't see why anyone should WANT them to make a "standard" film. We don't need orange masks anymore, 0.01% of people shooting this stuff make color darkroom prints, it could be relegated to a single one or two niche products, and we could move on to clear stocks for almost all film. And/or minilab scanners better able to work with that. They're SO much better for scanning in other ways, which is more popular now. And they should similarly be better for minilabs of the future if they don't require orange masks. A mask objectively reduces the signal density and slightly reduces dynamic range.
@@gavinjenkins899I'm on board with them leaving the clear base, and agree with the advantages you mentioned. If they can just increase lattitude and decrease grain, we'd have a great next iteration.
Personally I think Phoenix 200 is a ton of fun to shoot. I like the unique look and sometimes strange results it gives.
Does this film have any anti halation layer? The orange glow around the highlights indicates that it may not have, which explains some of the ills that this film displays.
It doesn't seem to, I observed strong halation on quite a few shots. Hopefully, they'll implement an effective anti-halation layer on the sequel.
Hi man. Love ur sharing and thoughts of the HPhoenix200 film. You mentioned here u shot most of the the pics at ASA100 or ASA125 yah. Just wondering do you developed it at ASA100/125 or at boxspeed(200)?
Hey thanks! It was developed normally by the lab (no pull).
Regarding price: Obviously depends on where you buy it. In Europe Phoenix costs around 15,5€. Porta 400 for example costs 18,5€.
Yes
I shot my first roll of Phoenix on landscapes and basically bushwalking type shots and that was a big mistake - too much detail to try and capture with the chunky grain, and too much dynamic range for the emulsion’s limited latitude to handle. My lab’s Frontier scans looked like hot trash, DSLR scanning brought back some level of detail and dynamic range, but still not great. As the film stands now it’s best treated like slide film in terms of dynamic range, and on bold shapes and lower detail subjects where the grain isn’t struggling to reproduce finer elements. I’ve seen some excellent results with street and portraiture work,l that seems to bring out the best in the film. Theres another roll sitting in my fridge awaiting its turn, I reckon I’ll do a portraiture series with it and see how that goes. Phoenix isn’t perfect but it’s still bloody awesome to have, and can only get better as Iford/Harman work with the formula.
Well said! It's a great indication of their future capability. Making color film from scratch can't be easy.
It's finicky, but it can give very beautiful results.
In a nutshell! 😁
To me it Looks like a „beta-version“ of a film if i can say so. I will treat it like an Ilford 50 and use fill flash all the time to reduce Contrast especially with Portraits . After I‘ve seen your video I will give it a try.
I started this video with a horrible case of diarrhea, and I’m happy to say after watching, it has cleared up completely. #algorithm
This film looks like 2012 instagram
If Phoenix 200 came from some no-name producer in Eastern Europe, given its many lackluster characteristics, it would have been laughed at for a few weeks and then consigned to the YT garbage bin. That it comes from Harmon/Ilford does not justify a different treatment. Apart from its lack of color fidelity and excessive contrast, the reason it's hard to scan is that scanners come programmed to scan C-41 specification film, which means a color mask required for traditional darkroom chemical paper printing. Phoenix 200 lacks such a mask, which throws off lab (and personal) scanners. Harmon acknowledged this problem from the first day, and it offered programming adjustments to allow such scanners to cope with their new film. That many labs don't care to make allowances for one, low volume film brand is understandable, and it is not worthy of a YT video. If Phoenix 200 is the future of film, we're all going to be shooting digital in the foreseeable future.
It is my favorite color film by a mile. Portra by comparison is washed out muddy blah. Phoenix is beautiful when used correctly (which it isn't in this video for the exact reasons he states: high contrast harsh sun. Not really a good time to shoot ANY photography). Color darkroom printing: lol, I'm sure all 7 people who do that will be so disappointed. Personal scanners: no, it makes personal scanning way easier. You can put in far less correction and get more range out of the film and do it all in camera or in scanner, without software passes of correction after. In this case, the latitude is low to begin with so an extra stop of range still = low range, but if a competitively high latitude film with no mask could get the highest range of all. Or does, already -- see: aerocolor. Labs being too lazy to figure out a setting for their machines for an hour once every 5 years when a new coloremulsion comes out: quadruple lol. Found the lab tech with no work ethic in the comments! Not being able to spend 0.1% of your time every several years to stay up to date is plain embarassing and shameful, no other word for any lab that disrespects their own job and role.