A Harman Phoenix 200 test roll

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).

Going Digital with the Olympus E-PL2

Jazz up this old lens – Leitz Summitar 50mm F2 wide open

I was a bit restless last week-end, still scanning the backlog of films I needed some less intensive activity. Plus my son has a field trip in Indonesia and we were thinking he would be better off wit a cheap camera, just in case he lost it, drop it or got robbed.

So I scratched my head and after a while (and a bit of google-ing) went down to the shop and bought a Olympus E-PL2 and 12-24mm lens plus an adapter for Leica lenses.

Lunch time – Leitz Summitar 50mm F2 wide open

For 140 USD my son have a very good camera although “obsolete” said the shopkeeper. And I can attach my Leica lenses including the russian and japanese ltms to a digital sensor. I can let you see some results.

Gong xi fa cai – Industar 22 50mm F3.5 wide open

 

Like everything this takes time to get used to and I am no expert in micro four-third cameras, but it looks this can be a fun toy. A few things to take into account:

• the E-PL2 has a crop factor of 2, so the 50mm becomes a 100mm and the Serenar 135 becomes a 270mmF4 lens !
• even with the adaptor depth there is not much room for recessed lenses, so the Jupiter 8 with its big inner element cannot be used (damn I really wanted to use this one)
• on the good side you cannot hurt the sensor with the collapsible lens.
• mmm the camera uses the back screen for focusing which is very difficult for me; and EVFs are a bit expensive just for fun, so I don;t know how much usage I’ll do with thus.

Gong Xi Fa Cai everybody, happy year of the monkey.