harman technology dropped a new version of their phoenix film line this year on the film photography community and it’s a lot better for lab scanning!
phoenix i was hard on labs – since it was a newly formulated film, scanners didn’t have calibration for it. harman issued setting recommendations but even those came out with crazy colors that made photos look overbaked.
youtube channels like pushing film showed a completely different set of results with home scanning. scans were pleasant and usable! it illuminated how much home scanning and editing can impact the quality of film images, especially with pro-level conversion software and equipment.
enter phoenix ii…
these images were taken on a simple point and shoot camera, the olympus stylus zoom and developed at boston film lab aka catlabs.
i really love some of them! it’s great to be able to send phoenix ii to a lab and know that the results aren’t going to be the same as phoenix i.
again though, as with phoenix i, phoenix ii doesn’t play nice with contrast when your subject is not in full sun altogether.
i’m SURE with home scanning, you could draw out the shadows in the image above and reduce the highlights, but i’m looking for something that works better with lab scanning.
just a word of caution when selecting which scenes to photograph with this film. experiment for yourself to see what works!
also, cloudy conditions work best but not the sky…
avoid large amount of sky and contrasty scenes. of course, this is my taste. yours might be different.
highlights hold a definite pink tone. and this changes from scene to scene depending on the lighting.
