Like everyone else, I was thrilled to learn of Harman’s new color film. I bought two rolls last year, but I did not get to them until a few weeks ago. Going in, I had no particular expectations for this film being a great emulsion. Many reviews cited its poor exposure latitude with loss of detail in both highlights and shadows. No one seemed to care for the graininess either. After looking at a lot of images, I got the impression that the film gave muddy, grainy images that appeared very soft in many instances. Still, I bought two rolls to support the cause and to see for myself.
I shot this roll over the course of a sunny afternoon in Midtown. I tried to choose a range of subjects in bright light and with shadows with as much color as possible. Since my AF-C produces sharp images, I also chose subjects that had clean lines and borders to assess the film’s sharpness. What I never expected was how badly I would treat this film.
For starters, I discovered that my Minolta AF-C had bad light leaks at the door hinge and along the top of the film door under the viewfinder. As if the light leaks alone were not enough of a problem, the development process was a fiasco. My thermometer, which I’ve used for the last six years, was wildly inaccurate. However, not knowing this at the time, I overheated the chemicals. While heating the chemicals, I thought they seemed a little warm. But, believing my formerly trustworthy thermometer, I went ahead. When I removed the negatives (one Phoenix and one Fuji 400), both seemed far darker than usual. But I shrugged it off.
Over the next day, thinking back, I became suspicious and bought two more thermometers. When I did a side-by-side comparison of the three, I discovered, to my horror, that my once trustworthy thermometer was off by 18 degrees F! Looking closely at the malfunctioning thermometer, I noticed that the blue liquid in it had separated, and there was a small pool of blue liquid in the top that had gone unnoticed. I had cooked two rolls of color film in 120F developer followed by probably 110F blix. The roll of Fuji 400 contained images intended for a review of the Minolta MD 24-35mm zoom, and the Harman was for this review—four hours of shooting, cooked! After going through the five stages of grief, I decided to scan the negatives just to see what overdevelopment does to color film.
One piece of good news—Phoenix dries flat. The negatives are purple instead of the usual orange, which I had read could cause scanning headaches. My scanning setup consists of the Epson V600 and Epson Scan 2 software. I set the scanner for autoexposure, 48-bit color, and 2400DPI output. After the preview scan, I went through each thumbnail and adjusted each image using the software’s histogram feature (as described in this post). This is my typical workflow for all color negatives. The Phoenix scanned easily–like any other color film I’ve scanned.
I use Apple Photos alone for photo management, so the only changes made to improve the images were slight tweaks to the contrast, brightness, and shadow sliders. These are the standard adjustments made for any color film. Looking at the scanned images in Apple Photos, the Fuji had a lot of extra grain and major color shifts on many frames. Shockingly, many of the Harman images didn’t look that much different than those I had seen in reviews—even considering the light leaks.
Overall, the issues pointed out by other reviewers (1, 2, 3)—increased grain, loss of detail in shadows and highlights, and muddy shadows—are present in my images as well. However, considering how badly I botched the development, these images are not nearly as bad as I had feared.
What do I like about Harman Phoenix 200? The blues—I have never seen such brilliant blues. Even with the grain, I love the blues. Some of these images I actually like. The Jazz Festival sign, Fox Theater sign, the mural, and the box-office kiosk images all have the issues cited by reviewers, but I like them anyway. If Harman improves the film’s latitude so that shadow and highlight details suffer less while keeping the blues, I would buy more of this film.
Where do I go from here? I’m going to shoot the second roll of Phoenix 1/2 in my Maxxum 7 and 1/2 in my XD5 to see how Phoenix performs when not abused. I hope the blues remain as intense when developed at the correct temp. Harman has a chance to create a brilliant new emulsion, and I hope they succeed. Meanwhile, I will be testing thermometers and replacing light seals.
