I finally have gotten around to test this new film from the Ilford team. Due to some naming agreements they cannot market it as an Ilford film, but that is what it really is.
This is what they say about the film themselves in the technical documentation.
“HARMAN Phoenix II is our 2nd generation ISO 200, C41 process, colour negative film. It can be used for any photographic subject with results dependent on ambient lighting conditions, colour palette, and exposure accuracy. Best results are typically obtained outdoors whilst metering for the mid-tones. On bright days, use of a UV filter will improve colour and clarity.”
I shot my roll at around EI 160 so I tried to rather err on the side of slight overexposure, and I think that was a good choice. After having shot just one roll, I don’t know if I can say all that much about the emulsion, but it seems like a massive step up from Phoenix 1 which I didn’t even bother trying. But we are still in “Lomography terroritory” here. And I think they are doing the same thing as Inoviscoat was doing, they are selling their work in progress emulsions while they are striving for an actual good color negative emulsion.
One thing that is easy to forget is that a modern consumer color negative emulsion is 15+ layers and professional emulsions can be upwards 20 layers. There are all sorts of scavenger layers and antihalo layers and color filtering layers there stacked on eachother. But since the Ilford coating machine was made for BW, the rumours say it can do 4 layers in one pass. Without altering their coating machine that makes this endeavor difficult. They have to run the entire master roll multiple times through the coater if they want to have all the bells and whistles of modern emulsions, and that is probably very complicated to do.
Image quality wise, it is very grainy for a 200 speed film. It does not have much of a shoulder in the highlights, they get clipped pretty quickly. Since the base is a purple color my Kodak Pakon scanner had a tricky time with this, so I don’t know if it is inherit to the film or the scanning process but all the shots leaned a bit towards the warm/yellow side. And sunset shots got very warm, but not necessarily in a bad way. If you look at the color chart Mimmi is holding, you can see that the yellow square is VERY saturated. But all the colors are there at least.
It is clear that the emulsion is missing any sort of anti-halo layers. In the shot of the tulips it looks like the yellow flowers are shimmering.
I’m not sure I will buy more of this film, but I hope Phoenix 3 is coming soon. We need more alternatives for color negative film. Currently we really only have Kodak in the market and without healthy competition prices will just keep on going up and up, with no innovation happening either.
Anyhow, here are some sample images. That’s it for this time.
