Matt, thanks a BUNCH for talking about scanning and running your tests in the studio! Your video is the only one I’ve seen to go that far in depth in to the performance of this film. Your results are wildly encouraging for what this film is.
Good on Ilford to do this, I hope they can proceed and improve. This should also point out just how difficult it is to make good modern color emulsions. A solid 'what the heck' to The Darkroom for being on the approved list, knowing this stuff was incoming, and not having a scan profile / procedure set up to catch the Phoenix film, and show Ilford's efforts to their best effect.
I think this is a fantastic achievement by Harman. OK, 3-4 stops dynamic range? Overcast twilight and it’s a winner. Scan in RGB colour, invert, and colour correct - easy. Such a beautiful look. Does it have an anti-halation backing? Doesn’t look like it - again a bonus for deliberate halos in highlights. Yes, a niche product and well worth the money.
Some unique looking stuff. Glad to see a bit of innovation out there. And big kudos to Harman for making it availabile as soon as it was announced. As someone who's still waiting for his Cinestill 400D (or even an update on it...), this is really appreciated.
@@MatMarrash Interesting. Just checked my e-mail, including spam folders and didn't see anything from them. Oh well. Fingers crossed that it's actually going to be delivered soon.
It's funny because I would see this becoming really popular for album covers, especially if they bring it out in 120. But that purple base must be hell to print using an enlarger!
I have been cringing all day looking the Harmon 200 videos done by RU-vidrs who have no idea what they are doing. So much praise and analysis of the film based on OBVIOUSLY jacked up lab scans. It’s both funny and sad that these folks can’t tell what they are looking at. Your video should have gone to everyone Harmon sent test rolls to so they could have watched it BEFORE making their own videos.
I don't blame folks for being relatively in the dark like this. I was only able to get the datasheet after asking a major distributor and got it < 24 hours before this video went live. Hoping in the future that the campaign and testing period are more standardized so the films can be shown in their best light.
@@MatMarrash I mostly agree, Harmon didn't do a good job communicating what their goals or technical standards are for this film, didn't really give the community a good starting point to work with. But on the photographer's side of things, it appears that most folks didn't bother shooting any charts. If someone is going to shoot a color film "test" and not shoot any charts . . . they are gonna get what they deserve.
@@TristanColgate I'd say charts matter because film is a tool, charts, latitude tests, etc quantify the parameters in which we get on with it, and increase the likelihood that we get the results we want. So many of the videos posted on Friday were people getting on with it very poorly because the didn't understand the tool they were using. What's worse, the videos showed that they didn't understand that they didn't understand. A lot of RU-vidrs should just stick with shooting Portra 400.
All the more reason to follow Mat- He has a borzoi / hose goat / noodle horse. She's so pretty, maybe not quite yet elegant, being a puppy, but that should come.
Well done Mat! I believe commercial scanners are very capable. It just requires a lot of tweaking. The scan guidance from Harman is a good starting point. Ultimately, the results you get will depend lab tech’s eye for color. I will critique Harman rolled this out too quickly and labs will have to play catch up and users will get some really bad scans early on. I believe the announcement should have been made, give labs a trial period and then open the shelves a couple weeks later. A lesson learned for rushing this to retail. I agree, home scanning creates the best results. Great work with the studio session!
I'm hoping that how this campaign launched was that color is a new territory for Harman. Labs are a crucial part to the film photography ecosystem that many a DIY or hyper-niche film shooter tend to forget. Either way, there's been a lot of positive buzz and I hope to see more refined emulsions rolling out of the UK soon!
Thanks for the video! I think it’s awesome that Harman is manufacturing a color film. Personally, I mostly shoot medium and large format film. It will be nice once they can manufacture 120 and sheet films.
I am so lucky that my normal film lab (Silverpan) spent all their film they got sent from Harman to dial in their lab scanners and make them work with Nortisu scanners.
The datasheet Harman put together has a lot of great info and shows they put in the hard work! I just wish it would have gone out or had been offered digitally in time for more people to get an idea what the film can really do when testing.
Great to see your response to this new colour film. I’m looking forward to seeing future iterations of this, hopefully be too long before it’s available in LF. By the way the focus on the K1000 can be nailed using the micro prism if you’ve got one of the original Japanese models.
Hey its good to see this and its good to see a video by you. Things are going good here for me in China. I may have to give this film a try in one of my little rollies.
THANK YOU for the clarity. H saw results all over the map before I finally set aside time to watch your video. Some of it looked like straight up redscale. Ilford's results looked green-tinted. Others seemed to have punchy blues. Glad to know it's mostly because freaking nobody knows how to scan it yet. I'm no expert at scanning color negative, but I do it in-house and every roll gets its own film base density and color calibrated before I start actually spitting out TIFFs. Once you got the scanning thing figured out, your results actually looked way better than anything else I had seen to this point. I'm with you on wanting to buy and use this stuff because it will fund further R&D. I've been an Ilford fanboy for a long time, and even if v1 of the film isn't mind-blowingly good compared to the old standby Gold 200 or what have you, it's worth investing in IMO. I rarely do anything with color negative film anyway besides shooting family snapshots with my half frame, and I'm not above color correcting those scans if necessary :D
You mean a substitute for making digital scans out of slide film, or do you mean cross processing? This is a negative film, and slides projected in inverted colors are hardly usable.
I commend Harman on this but it shows just how hard it is to build new color film stocks and even more, how hard it is to manufacture it at scale. I hope they continue to have the money to invest. The reason Kodak can still do it is because they never stopped and maintained the generational knowledge from the decades since new film stocks were created. Every Photo enthusiast should try this if they can get it and give feedback to Harman. IT is probably the most important part of "experiment".
^-- This right here! It's a monumental task to take on, especially when the only other big player in the market has half a century's head-start. Even if you don't like the look of this film, there are dozens of other ways you can support Harman's research through their excellent B&W products.
I agree the entire marketing blitz and influencer strategy was very bizarre. Knew it would be disappointing. I’ll pick up a roll or two to support new films and try it out but the results I’ve seen this morning have been roughhhh
None of the reasons why one would normally use colour neg film. This stuff is grainy, has a lousy exposure latitude and can't be printed on RA-4 paper. So, what's the point?
How is literally new film from a major manufacturer who hasn't done colour film, disappointing? This is huge news - it takes us a step away from a time where only is Kodak making real colour film, and having occasional batches of film coated in Germany sold through Orwo and Lomography.
@@arildedvardbasmo490 Well they did used to make ciba/ilfochrome which was used directly for shooting in large format, and that stuff was gorgeous! It was discontinued in 2012 a year before ektachrome was first discontinued. So this 1960s hot back room consumer film is a bit of a travesty.....
Harman indicates it is possible, though doesn't provide exact filtration notes in the datasheet. I'm guessing there's still testing to be done there: www.harmanphoto.co.uk/amfile/file/download/file/1962/product/2143/
@@MatMarrash Ir is not easy to give any filtration notes for RA-4, as all papers have a bit different requirements, and this can slightly deviate between batches of paper. Also, developers (only part of chemistry affecting density and color balance) by different manufacturers do have slight differences in results. Also, there is no universal standard for color correction. There are three big standards - Kodak, Agfa and Durst. Also, older Meoptas have differences - needing often more magenta correction compared to Durst. I keep wondering, if this film prints, as all information in the internet is from people scanning. Will the required filtration be in the range of normal color heads, or do you need to do tricks, as using a blank standard C-41 negative? This works up to a certain point, but as the orange mask in standard film is not uniform, it would make pictures with big differences of exposure in different parts of the frame very hard (color crossing). I ordered this film, and we´ll see how it worki when I will get my rolls.
Hi, I would like to have your opinion about Stenopeika cameras, I have the air force 4x5. Im half happy, it is a good camera, a lot of movements are possible. The built is mainly good but in some details, you can see some scratches, level spirits are not correctly glued etc I did some close up portraits: it is very sharp. There are some helpful pieces to zero-ing except the back board.
i wish someone made a reversal friendly film base for scanning in this age, given how scanners are hard to come by for common folks. ive switched almost exclusively to dlsr capturing film and using darktable to do the inversion but some films/exposure situations it cant handle. i can also see some more casual shooters using this film being put off by it because the first results they see are over/under exposed images from the lab scans. i dont know, i like that this is new stock but yes, maybe the marketing was over hyped.
That's exactly right, some other youtuber (I belive it was grainydays) posted bits of interview with Harman employees and they are open that it is based on XP2+
@@MatMarrash No no no no no!!!! It's because there are no integral masking layers on Phoenix 200. Integral masking is a very weak yellow positive image and a very weak magenta positive image. I believe blue masks green and green masks red, though it's many years ago I studied this.
Still trying to see the point of a print film that can't be printed in a conventional darkroom on traditional RA-4 paper. Looks like something for the Lomography crowd who like whatever is the latest hype as long as it looks weird. As someone who has shot colour neg film over several decades I'm quite unimpressed.
Harman states in their datasheet that this can be color printed, though they do not provide starting guides like the do for scanning. I'd recommend checking out their correction notes for Noritsu scanners for hints on where to start if you're seriously considering this with RA-4. www.harmanphoto.co.uk/amfile/file/download/file/1962/product/2143/
They left it pretty open-ended, but my interpretation was that this particular run of film may not be repeated, but a better version could be offered in the future.
Like Mat says they're look to improve it all the time. They know it's limitations already and will be looking to how they can improve it. Don't forget this is a new film from base upwards, so they'll always be looking to move forward with it. They're are look to the future with the film.