Harman, the brand that sells Ilford black and white films has been teasing something for the past few weeks. Only a select few photographers and influencers got special cards from the firm. But unconfirmed yet real-looking ISO 200 colour film packaging has been spotted: youtube.com/watch?v=jeXi3C…
Apparently, a store has made the film available early and one Reddit user was able to snag it before it was de-listed.
No sample photos yet.
This is the second time this year a retailer broke the embargo. Previously, it was Polaroid Reclaimed Blue 600 (analog.cafe/r/polaroid-rec…) that got leaked a few days before the release.
I really enjoyed the Reclaimed Blue film. The rumors were juicy and the results ended up looking fantastic. I’m hoping to see Kodak Gold-level of image quality, if Harman is indeed launching colour film.
I’m starting to see more posts about the little-known Ilford Ilfocolor 400 film. Note that this film is not what the Harman Phoenix announcement is about.
You see, Ilford was split about a decade ago into two companies, one operating the factory in the UK, which goes by Harman (Ilford Photo) and makes films like Ilford HP5 — and the other, Ilford Imaging Switzerland GmbH. The latter went through bankruptcy and switched a lot of owners but it retains the rights to Ilford name, which they “rent” to Harman to sell under.
Swiss Ilford Imaging (now located in Germany, btw) sells disposable film cameras and they also sell rebranded colour film, Ilfocolor 400. It was not marketed outside of EU and Australia — likely because the UK Ilford Photo has the exclusive rights or an agreement for the US/Canada market where I and most of the Analog.Cafe readers are located.
Ilfocolor 400 is suspected to be an OWO NC 500 (analog.cafe/r/orwo-wolfen-…) rebrand for the similar-looking results and emulsion base colour.
SPOILER IN NEXT PARAGRAPH
As you can see, this is all very confusing. But the good news is that the rumored Phoenix 200 is made entirely within the UK factory, which means it’s likely new and completely unlike the stuff inside Ilfocolor 400 boxes.
It appears that someone had leaked the entire datasheet for this film.
I’m happy that no one published the samples yet as they would reveal the most important part of this [unconfirmed] film product.
Nevertheless, from the datasheet, I can already tell that it will be a narrow dynamic range film (about 5 stops) with low blue colour sensitivity.
The negatives will have no mask and thus some scanners or scanner software may struggle with it. There are ways to vert negatives by hand (analog.cafe/r/how-to-inver…) if that becomes a problem.
Dmitri Nov 20, ‘24 edit
Dmitri Dec 1, ‘23 edit
Dmitri Dec 1, ‘23 edit
Dmitri Dec 1, ‘23 edit