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.
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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.
Dmitri Nov 29, ‘23, edited on Dec 1, ‘23