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The Story of Harman Phoenix:
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Having tried a roll of Phoenix in 35mm, I was keen to see what it might do in 120, but holding out for some autumn colour. I was even more excited than usual to click through to the scans, unsure what I would find, but hopeful...
Joy! Yellow beech trees came back as a lovely warm orange, verging on pink, perhaps helped by some halation from the bright sun behind. The strong contrast did give me some challenges, but at least made me think harder about what I was doing. The last few frames in Oxford had a real glow as well. Blue sky was almost turquoise, though very slightly blotchy over a large area in one frame.
I'm rating this as 5* in the context of being an experimental film, but one that gave me genuine delight. Definitely film! I'm very glad to have another roll ready to go when a suitable opportunity arises.
Thanks as always to AW for the processing.
it's a bit too saturated
like you upped the contrast setting on your phone
The 35mm version of Phoenix really didn't work well for me, but this 120 variant is really fun. I've bought a bunch more rolls and I'm looking forward to what I'll capture on them. The grain is perfectly nice and the halation better controlled on 120, and I have no issues about shooting this more often. It's definitely a harder stock to shoot, but I think that when you nail it the shots can come out really, really nice.
I've noticed I'm getting very different results to a lot of people, so I figured I'd leave a few notes on what I've done.
1. I think this benefits from older lenses. I shot these examples on a Rolleiflex T, and the light bloom and lowered contrast when shooting into the sun really help give it an interesting vibe.
2. Softer and diffuse light seem to benefit this stock enormously. With its lower latitude you in theory want to avoid high contrast scenes, but I also think those scenes have the greatest opportunity for a fantastic shot. Golden hour street shots are my suggestion - the tones are great for the city and really give it a cosy feeling.
3. I scanned it myself using a camera and then processed it in NLP. For each of these shots I made only minor adjustments, but one of the major ones was lowering the contrast somewhat and disabling NLP's white balance correction entirely (I still white balanced before converting, to remove the purple mask, as normal).
Even still, not every shot is coming out great. It's a pretty tricky stock and nailing the exposure is a challenge. I agree with others saying to shoot this at ISO 160 - I think that's just enough overexposure to put detail in the shadows without blowing the highlights too far. I'm using incidence metering myself and having a reasonable amount of success.
It's great to have an alternative to Kodak Gold on 120, and I love the colours (most of the time).
If you love a good grainy look and punchy colours with a retro feel you have found your film, also it is Ilford pioneering colour so worth supporting. What you don't get is a lot of exposure latitude or much really! so if you want shadow detail this is not going to do it for you, unless you are in even light conditions or studio lighting for example. I like its look so these shots show what to expect in harsh high contrast light.
