Harman Phoenix II 200

Harman Technology released the original Phoenix 200 in 2023 as the first color negative film manufactured in Britain in decades. It was a genuinely new emulsion rather than a rebrand, made at the Harman facility in Mobberley, Cheshire, and it had a look that was immediately recognizable: high contrast, unpredictable color shifts, and a tendency toward heavy grain and artifacts that some photographers loved and others found unusable. Harman was transparent about the original being a first-generation product.

Phoenix II, released in 2025, is the refined follow-on. The color is more consistent between rolls and exposures. The wild green and blue shifts that appeared in shadows on the first version are reduced, though not eliminated. Grain structure is controlled better. The overall result is a film that still looks nothing like Kodak or Fuji but can be used deliberately rather than treated as a lottery.

The palette is the reason to shoot it. Phoenix II renders colors with a particular British flatness that sits somewhere between accurate and desaturated, with an underlying warmth in mid-tones that appears in skin and architecture. The high-contrast curve compresses both shadow and highlight detail relative to Portra or Ektar; the film is uninterested in tonal latitude. What it delivers well is a distinctive flat-but-warm look in overcast daylight, which describes a significant portion of British shooting conditions.

Available in 35mm and 120, both released together at launch in July 2025. At ISO 200, it handles handheld work in good light comfortably and tolerates slight overexposure better than underexposure.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.10, which is gentle. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. Phoenix II is not a long-exposure specialist stock, but the forgiving reciprocity means it is not penalized badly for occasional tripod work either.