Petri 7s + Harman Phoenix 200
I’m a sucker for anything I think I can fix. Whether this is people, the annoying drip from the pipe in a family member’s kitchen or a camera that someone else has deemed irreparable. The latter reared its head when I was sixteen, with a Petri 7s that I bought from eBay for what was probably £15 (£24.40 in 2024 prices, adjusted for inflation). The leaf blades of the shutter were completely seized and covered in what could only be fairly described as “gunk” and I had a copy of the service manual. A copy of the service manual and absolutely no finesse with my hands was not sufficient to salvage the camera.
Sixteen years on, I decided to give a second-hand Petri 7s another go: at thirteen 2024 pounds as a Buy It Now item on eBay, how could I refuse? Even if it wasn’t functional, I’d have a pretty paperweight to enjoy. Upon receiving the box, I was surprised to see that everything appeared in working order: the shutter fired with timing that felt broadly right, the aperture blades moved relatively freely, the focussing rangefinder seemed to agree with focus by distance scale on the lens. What luck!
All could not be perfect however: I noticed that the frame counter wouldn’t always advance with the film advancing. Armed, once again, with the service manual, I tried to understand how the mechanism worked before brutishly bending one piece of metal towards another and giving the advance one more try. Since then, it seems to have held up well. While certainly being close to tempting fate, it’s had a couple of rolls of film through it and the frame counter seems to be working properly still.
It was always a camera I wanted as a cheap film rangefinder in the days when I was far more budget conscious than I have the luxury of being able to be today. In terms of feel and optical quality, I’m overjoyed with it. The surprise of receiving something that worked so well for such a low price in an age where film camera prices are increasing was fantastic.
As it was my first time in quite some time shooting film, I decided to load up something quite new to the film world: a 36 exposure roll of Harman Phoenix 200, a colour film launched as Harman’s first colour film in December 2023. From everything I’d seen about it, it wasn’t a film that was trying to be abdundantly clean or seeking to emulate anything that was already out there. It was a film intended to be a ‘beta’ for what Harman might be producing in the future (and, thinking cynically, a means of clawing back some of the R&D cost of implementing a colour process at their factory): it’s grainy and contrasty and really loves the colour red. I love how it renders colours and its grain and it’s sad to think that they’re saying that it will be a limited edition product: I just hope that it isn’t replaced by something with the sort of dullness that Kodak Gold and modern Fujifilm C200 have. Yes, it’s an extreme film if you’re looking for something that is sharp and true-to-life but I am not beyond accepting a crutch for colour rendition.
I have seen people discuss that maybe it would provide more shadow detail if shot at below box speed (ISO 160 has been theorised as the ‘sweet spot’ by Internet People), but the dark darks are what I like about it. Black blacks and vibrant colours are very appealing to me, especially if I never have to a deal with a contrast slider or curves in post.
What was more disappointing, however, was the treatment of the scans of the film when I got it processed: I’d gone to a Snappy Snaps nearby in the hope of just getting it done quickly. My impatience with regard to getting stuff back means that I’d just opted to go with the most high street film development with with the most one hour service available. The negatives seem to have come out fine, but the scans (as show here) all seem to have a little black bar along the top of the scans. Sloppy, annoying and ultimately fixable. Just a big frustrating when I paid the best part of £30 for development, scanning and 6x4 prints.