HarmanPhoenix 200

Harman Phoenix 200 is an experimental ISO 200 color negative film for C-41 processing, launched in December 2023 as the first color film made by Harman, the English company behind Ilford black-and-white films. Harman describes high contrast and strong visible grain, and warns of halation because the film has no masking dyes and limited antihalation [1] [10]. It is not the same film as Phoenix II (2025), a redesign; since August 2026, the original is sold as Phoenix 125 [3] [6].

Look and color

• Unusual by design. Harman lists “atypical colour rendering” and “punchy, vibrant scene rendition, even under softer lighting”, but adds that colors and contrast depend on the scanner and its settings. It suggests lowering saturation: −3 on a Fujifilm SP3000, and up to 30 % on other scanners [1].
• Very saturated. Analog.cafe found “some of the brightest, most saturated colours on film without any adjustments” [12]; a customer review on The Darkroom calls it “bizarrely oversaturated” [13].
• A warm or yellow cast. Reviewers describe “a pronounced yellow/cyan cast” [15], “an orangey/red color cast” [17] and “a definite golden bias” on one frame [18].
• Skin: “an overall yellowish tone that made me look a little unwell” [14]; the yellow cast “is not particularly flattering for skin tones” [15].
• Blues: “blue, especially in the sky, came through strongly” [14]; another customer on The Darkroom found the sky “VERY blue” [13].
• Greens: the sources disagree. Grass and trees “take on yellower tones” [14], and Analog.cafe saw limits in rendering foliage [12]; for Blue Moon Camera, “the color green can look quite nice” [15].
• Reds and surprises. The film “makes oranges and reds pop” [15], but hues are “unpredictable”, with “occasional and unexplained bursts of purple hue” [14].
• Halation. Casual Photophile saw “red halos surrounding extremely bright points of light”, much like CineStill films [11]; Analog.cafe reports red or orange halos, “some of the strongest halation effects on film”, and bright skies that turn “a little redder” [12]; one reviewer thinks it “might be even worse” than CineStill 800T [17]. Emulsive saw blooming around bright light sources, without CineStill-style glowing orbs [10].
• The scan decides. Scanned with a camera, Casual Photophile got “restrained contrast” and colors “truer to life”; the lab scans of the same film came back with “punchy colors, high contrast, visible grain” [11]. The Grain Archive style follows the lab-scan look, the one most often shown [23].

Tonality

• Contrast. Harman: the negatives are “higher contrast than most conventional colour films”, so bracketing may be needed on bright days [1].
• Curve. On the datasheet’s characteristic curve, the slope reads about 1.3 for the green and red layers and 1.5 for blue, about twice that of Portra 400’s curves (0.55 to 0.7 by our reading). The straight section is short, about 0.9 log H (3 stops), and the shoulder starts around log H 2.1 to 2.4. The blue curve is the steepest and the red flattens first (our reading of the graph) [1] [20].
• Narrow range. Analog.cafe estimates “about five stops of dynamic range”, comparable to high-contrast slide films [12]. Shadows show “very little information” [12]; “you won’t hold too much detail in the shadows or highlights” [16]; “the blacks are crushed and the highlights are missing detail” [19].
• Exposure advice has changed. The 2023 datasheet gives EI 100 to 400, with best results at EI 200 and half a stop to one stop of underexposure to control highlights [1]. The 2024 edition moves to EI 100 to 200, “with many users preferring to shoot at EI 160” [2], and Phoenix 125 is rated best between EI 100 and 160 [4].
• Push: not recommended. Long exposures: no correction from 1/10,000 to 1 s [1].

Grain and sharpness

Harman promises “strong visible grain” but publishes no RMS granularity or Print Grain Index [1]. For scale, Kodak’s figures for neighbors:

• On Kodak’s scale, 25 is the approximate visibility threshold [21].
• Reviews: “perhaps the coarsest out of all the new ISO200 colour emulsions” [12]; “The grain is heavy” [14]; “a very gritty effect” [15]. Decaf Journal disagrees: “just the right amount of texture” [19].

Spectral sensitivity

Under 2856 K tungsten light, the blue layer spans about 360 to 520 nm, the green layer rises to a narrow, sharp peak near 548 nm, and the red layer peaks near 676 nm with a long tail beyond 700 nm; Harman does not define the vertical scale [1]. That red peak sits well past Portra 400’s, near 650 nm [20]. Foliage reflects strongly in the near infrared, which may contribute to the yellowish greens some reviewers see: a hypothesis, not a measurement.

Names, status and history

• December 2023. Harman launched Phoenix 200 on December 1, 2023, in 36-exposure 35 mm cassettes [10]. Its datasheet calls it “experimental” and “the first ever made by HARMAN Photo”, with a risk of “occasional coating anomalies” [1].
• 2024: 120. Harman added a 120 version in September 2024 [18]; the September 2024 datasheet lists both formats [2].
• July 2025: Phoenix II. Harman released Phoenix II, in which “each layer and component has been redesigned” [8]. Its datasheet claims “a more normal contrast, colour balance and finer grain” and a wider latitude, still without an orange mask [3]. PetaPixel was “led to believe” that it would replace the original [9].
• August 2026: Phoenix 125. Harman repackaged the original and DX-coded it for ISO 125, after photographers said it worked better at a lower speed [6].
  • Harman says Phoenix 125 “retains the same characteristics that you loved (or hated) about the original Phoenix 200” [5].
  • PetaPixel reports that Harman “tweaked its formula” and calls the original “discontinued” [7].
  • We treat Phoenix 125 as the same film under a new name and rating, as reported, not confirmed.
• Datasheet. We use the November 2023 edition, hosted by Emulsive [1]; Harman now hosts a September 2024 edition with revised exposure advice [2].