I was recently gifted a roll of Harmon Phoenix 200 (thanks Reformed Film Lab! Click here for a $10 coupon for their online store) and I figured I should write up my experiences with it.

First impressions are immediate that this is a different type of film - the emulsion is a garish bright yellow, and Harmon is clear in describing it as an "experimental" film emulsion. Ostensibly rated for ISO 200, I've seen a mixed bag of results posted online, most of which show high-contrast, highly saturated images, and several reviewers have noted that they feel it would do better rated at ISO100, and may have a narrower latitude than they are used to with negative color film.

I took it out on two photoshoots - both in bright light, and using my Nikon F4E (I upgraded the battery pack from the F4S configuration) on aperture priority, matrix metering. I did at times use a +1 EV compensation, but mostly kept it at ISO 200.

I developed in CineStill Cs41 kit - it was not fresh developer as I had already ran several rolls through it, but I did compensate using my custom Excel spreadsheet (drop me a line if you would like a copy of this). I also included a positive control, in the form of a roll of CineStill 800T I was developing for my friend Metaljunky. I also shot other color rolls, CineStill400D, with the same camera before and after, so I can safely say that the exposures were pretty much on-point.

Right away I could tell that this was going to be a bit different - the negatives had an obvious blue cast and were fairly transparent, lacking the typical dark orange stain that I'm used to seeing. This seemed in keeping with what other people have seen, and I expected that the scanner would color-correct, or I could fiddle with the white balance myself. After drying though, I was actually quite disappointed with the results. Normally my F4 metering is so good that I need to do little, if any, correction from the scanner default settings. With the Phoenix though the images were dark, muddy, grainy, and with a pronounced red cast. They looked like under-exposed Redscale film to be honest.

Default scans - dark, muddy, grainy
 

I was able to adjust and rescue a good number of the images with the Epsonscan software, but the histograms were telling, in that they were mostly left-shifted (under-exposed) and narrow, leaving me with limited room to adjust the contrast curves. Even after trying to correct the red cast, the images were far from print-worthy, although some did have a certain ambience that wasn't unappealing.

A typical histogram from this roll of negatives: note the pronounced left-shift, narrow peak, and very limited blue channel.

A couple of the images that I deemed "not too bad":

In comparison, this image from Metaljunky was developed at the same time, and scanned in using default settings with no adjustments needed.

My overall impressions are that it's probably a fun little emulsion to play around with, but absolutely it needs to be rated lower than ISO200, and my eyeball of the histogram would suggest even a two-stop over-exposure wouldn't hurt it. My results seemed worse than others I've seen - maybe it just has less tolerance to used developer than other brands of film. For my purposes though, I won't be buying any more of it. My styles are either a high-end professional look (think Kodak Portra) or a nostalgic vibe evocative of the classic 1980s film era (which I come closest to with stocks like Cinestill400D, a modern emulsion). As exciting as it is to see new film stocks hitting the market over the last year or so, this one isn't for me. I do have a roll of the Flic Film Aurora 800 to try out though...I'll share my experiences with that one when I get an opportunity to make the most of the higher speed it offers. Let me know your thoughts or experiences with this film stock if you've tried it.