July 2024
The camera is light because it’s made of plastic and the lens is said to be a beast. Viewfinder and exposure are vertical. Marketing – in its infinite wisdom – decided this is the way to lure phone-camera users to film.
I’ve now shot a roll of Harman Phoenix 200 and then loaded the Ilford FP4 plus ISO 125 for some proper assessment since the Phoenix is experimental and said to be quite wild.
In terms of aperture it offers pre-determined choices: with blitz, or without blitz. Each category has choices of its own such as bokeh, bulb, night, and two types of blitz. Also full auto.
In terms of focus, you have a reasonable range of .25m, .5m, 1m, 2m, 3m and infinity. The supplied wristband measures 25cm and is a convenient tool to shoot macro.
It has an ISO dial – most probably for calculating the presets – which can most surely be manipulated to gain further control of the shot.
72 photos are a lot.
The Harman is a rabid dog impossible to tame. Yields unusual colours and grain. Becomes reasonable if exposure is perfect but runs amok at the slightest écart from the very small exposure latitude. And it’s closer to 100 than it is to the advertised ISO 200.
Ilford:
December 2024
The advance lever broke down and had to send it for repairs. They did repair it, and sent me the same camera back (serial number matches). This happened on the 3rd or 4th roll. Has been working fine since.
I bought a Lomo Apparat when the Pentax broke down, which sent me down a very deep rabbit hole – I now own 10+ Lomo cameras.
While mostly plastic like the Lomos, the Pentax is a modern camera with substantially superior capabilities in terms of controls, light gathering, mechanics, size – pretty much everything. This is the « always-in-the bag» camera that pretty much guarantees I can get a shot of whatever when coupled with a high-ish ISO film.
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