Harman Switch Azure 125: now London buses are blue!

Available in both 35mm and 120, Switch Azure 125 “switches” colour couplers around to create a differing contrast response to the individual channels, for creative adventures.

Harman Technology Ltd, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of analogue photographic films, darkroom papers, and photo chemicals – the popular Ilford brand comes to mind – announced this month its new film, a 125 ISO color negative, Switch Azure, an emulsion that invites photographers to go from the everyday to the extraordinary… and switch the world around you.

Reading about the new Switch Azure emulsion, the first thing that comes to mind, if you’re old enough to have used Orwo Chrom UT-21 transparency back in the 80s (last century) are the shifted colors, from batch to batch, of this film manufactured in the German Democratic Republic (yes, East Germany, behind the wall). The quality was so variable that photographers usually reserved the Orwo Chrom for creative endeavors, not risking using it for work that needs consistency in terms of colour.

Back then we could only get the emulsion from a single supplier, in Lisbon, and if you wanted to use Orwo Chrom for work – because it was cheaper than other slide film – you would try to buy a batch, to get consistency from roll to roll. Photographers I knew then used to say that using the emulsion was like playing Russian roulette: you never knew what would happen next. It was fun, though, as far as I remember, as long as you kept to Fujichrome or Ektachrome for serious work.

While Orwo’s colour was “variable” due to lack of quality control, Harman’s Switch Azure 125 is variable by design, meaning there will be consistency from roll to roll and batch to batch. Available in both 35mm and 120, Switch Azure 125, is the latest offering in the company’s long-term colour journey and follows on from Harman Phoenix, Harman Phoenix II, and Harman RED.

Introduced as a creative film, Harman Switch Azure 125 is not an emulsion catering for those who want to simply register the world around them in color. Aimed at the creative photographer Switch Azure welcomes you to a world where pink and orange skies meet cyan bananas and blue strawberries. As the colours switch, ordinary scenes become unexpectedly extraordinary.

Shooting with the new emulsion turns iconic red London buses into blue vehicles, as sunsets are reimagined in cool blues and dreamy purples. Yellow New York cabs will stop being yellow… and your friends will look like characters from the Smurfs or Avatar.

“By ‘switching’ two of the three colour couplers around, this creates a differing contrast response to the individual channels which can render blues as orange, yellows as a vibrant azure and reds as hues of purple/blue”, explains Giles Branthwaite, sales & marketing director at Harman Technology, who adds that “backed by the recent announcement of significant capital investment in both operational and research & development functions, sales from this film will continue to be reinvested to support a roadmap of future colour films.”

The “switching” effects are not limited to the emulsion, and Harman Technology says that “the type of scanner used with Azure negatives can significantly alter how the digitized image will look.”

Harman Tehcnology invite photographers to follow their journey @harmanphoto and share images shot on Harman Switch Azure by tagging #harmanazure #harmanphoto #harmanswitch. The packaging also contains a QR code which allows the film community to give their feedback on the product and what they would like to see from the company in the future.