On July 16, Harman released their new film stock, Phoenix 2. I was lucky to get a voucher for a photo walk organized by Fotoimpex in Berlin, where I had the chance to try out the new film. They even invited an employee from Harman to give a short presentation about the film’s characteristics. He told us that, despite the name, Phoenix 2 is not based on the same emulsion as the original.
Since all my 35mm cameras had unfinished rolls in them on the day of the photo walk, I brought my medium format Bronica S2A and asked for Phoenix 2 in 120. Like the first version, the second one also has an ISO of 200. Luckily for us, the evening was sunny.
We walked as a large group of around 100 people from the Brandenburg Gate to the Fotoimpex store. Walking in such a huge group definitely isn’t my cup of tea. At the end of the walk, we dropped off our film for development and scanning. The service was included with the voucher, so I couldn’t refuse the free scans.
Fotoimpex were incredibly fast with their service. I received my scans on the next day. The downside was that these were unedited default Noritsu scans, with green shadows and a strong yellow cast. The colors were so off that some of the photos looked almost sepia-toned. (All the thumbnails are clickable.)
They sent us JPEGs, so there wasn’t much anyone could do to fix the problem. I managed to slightly adjust the white balance to remove the sepia tone, but I still wanted to pick up the negatives and rescan them myself.
The next morning, I checked Instagram and saw photos from other participants reposted by organizers account. All of them had that terrible yellow/sepia color cast. I thought, “Oh my god, this is the worst possible outcome for a new product launch. It’s like an anti-advertisement. Nobody would want their photos to look like this.” Some people even wrote in the comments that this film has a retro look.
No it doesn’t! Most people just don’t edit their scans. It’s likely that the Noritsu scanner messed up the white balance because of the unusual purple film base instead of the traditional orange one.
After collecting the negatives, I scanned them using my Epson V750 and edited the files in Negative Lab Pro. By selecting the purple base of the negative as a neutral point for white balance, NLP gave me very good results, although they were slightly shifted toward cooler tones. I added between +10 and +15 warmth to almost every photo on my roll, which gave me very pleasing results.
While measuring light, I did not intentionally overexpose or expose for shadows as the organizers of the walk recommended. Instead, I used an incident light meter and tended to err on the side of overexposure when I couldn’t set precise settings. Despite this, the negatives still have plenty of detail in the shadows in all the shots.
Many of the photos posted from the walk showed a very noticeable halation effect. I would assume that in the 35mm version, the new Phoenix is still prone to halation. On my photos, it’s still visible but much less prominent. For example, you can see the red glow around the hair of people on the next photo. I guess the backing paper in the 120 film helps control the halation.
The emulsion quality of my roll was good. I didn’t notice any holes or debris. It’s hard to say much about the grain, since no film really looks grainy in 120 format.
Overall, I like the results and think that Phoenix 2 is a great modern film stock. I also find it amazing that someone is actually producing something new in a market that feels oversaturated with respooled cine film and repackaged Fomapan.
Now here’s the important question: will I buy it again? Well, at 15 euros and 30 cents, I’d rather pass. In 35mm, Kodak Gold 200 is good enough, has a proper anti-halation layer, and costs half as much at local drugstores. In 120 format, Phoenix 2 also costs about 50 percent more than Kodak Gold. But if you’re interested in some of its characteristics, like halation, it’s worth giving it a try!