Happy new year dear readers. January is coming to its end, but its never too late, so here is my first post of the year.
Back in December we visited the amazing exhibition of Daido Moriyama at the Photographer’s Gallery in Soho ( London) and I discovered that their shop in the basement has a dream selection of films.
I am still going to patronize the usual smaller shops but I think it’s great to be able to put one’s hand on the stuff you read about in blogposts. So I browsed the shelves and found a roll of the just available ( and if I am correct not for long) color film from Harman.
I vaguely remembered that Harman is the company producing the Ilford films, but frankly I don’t know much more. So at the end of December we were back home in Cannes for family holidays and I finished my roll of TMY400 and loaded the roll of Phoenix 200.
As you can see on the first picture the film has a very pretty ( odd?) yellow color out of the canister and once processed a pronounced purple tint. I loaded the film in full light, in the skate park above, but I don’t think it had any effect. And set the meter to 200ISO, although the film is said to have latitude ( but not so much if you read some reviews).
The skate park is a new addition to the Cannes cityscape, that day was really gorgeous and the tint of the film goes pretty well with the colors of the place.
Moving a bit further towards the Pointe de la Croisette I took a couple of shots of boats. I think we see here what people mean by the film being very contrasty.
I quite like the picture above, probably the color scheme fell right into the soft spot of the film, and the light being softer the contrast is less accentuated ( oxymoron )?
The four pictures above are taken along the promenade des Anglais in Nice. A certain atmosphere develops there, probably mid afternoon winter light and overcast day helps with the contrast. The feeling is very vintage.
Back in London, the dummies below were remarkable by their red heads. The glow is quite funny, I would say unexpected.
The Standard building renders pretty well ( overcast, mid afternoon ) with not so much color cast. Definitely vintage and some glow around the lights.
Bye Bye Georg Baselitz sculpture in Hyde Park.
Finally walking on a beautiful lunch time towards Hyde Park I met these two nice Brazilian students, one holding a Nikon F3, we had quite a long chat ( in the cold), and parted our way after taking this shot. This gives an idea of how skin tones are rendered.
Final word? Probably worth a try. Surely has a lot of character, I think Hartman said the film was experimental. A very specific vintage look, a lot of contrast but I probably won’t try again to be honest. If I compare with the post about the Cinestill 400 D I think the Cinestill has a lot less color cast, a smoother rendering of contrast, but ok its more expensive ( 12.5 GBP vs 17 GBP if I remember well).
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