It is a part of the Kodak Portra range of professional quality, daylight-balanced, colour negative films. Well known for producing natural-looking skin tones, with high detail and fine grain. It is also known for its natural warmth, like most Kodak films. Portra 400, in particular, has undertones of orange and yellow. Spectacular skin tones Portra Films delivers smooth, natural reproduction of skin tones, plus exceptional colour saturation Spectacular skin tones?Portra Films delivers smooth, natural reproduction of skin tones, plus exceptional colour saturation For better or worse, a lot of hobbyist film shooters want a certain vintage look. With its sunny feel and colours and contrast that enhance a scene without making it unrealistic, Portra seems to deliver exactly what they want. Is shooting Portra or 35mm in general ‘worth it’? Marseille. Film Leica M6, 35mm Leica Summicron ASPH, Kodak Portra 400

With most people still processing their work in a darkroom, the inherent differences in colour and contrast in these films were a big help. Other films might push a certain attribute as their thing, like high contrast monochrome or excelling after dark, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Portra shines though by not turning anything up past around an eight, never mind all the way to eleven. Choose Kodak Portra Films for natural skin tones, ideal colour, and finer grain in every situation. Day or night, studio or location, candid or posed, KODAK PROFESSIONAL PORTRA Films deliver:

Superb colour in mixed lightno matter the lighting conditions, even under fluorescent, you can expect beautiful, natural colour. For years, professional photographers have preferred Kodak Portra Films because of their consistently smooth, natural reproduction of the full range of skin tones. In that same tradition, the new Portra 400 Film is the ideal choice for portrait and fashion photography, as well as for nature, travel and outdoor photography, where the action is fast or the lighting can?t be controlled. Whether Portra is in your local 1-hour photo place or pharmacy is less certain. The last time I went in mine, the only Kodak films they had were the consumer ones like Gold 200. Portra 400’s high price and those 5-roll boxes likely have something to do with this. With negative film there’s still a bit of work to be done after shooting and developing. I have a feeling that many people who are dissatisfied with Portra are having troubles getting the colors right during the scanning process. I recommend reading through my guide on Scanning and Editing Color Negative Film to help you nail the colors. Best-in-class underexposure latitude no other colour film gives you so much latitude (-2 to +3 stops) so you can shoot with confidence even under challenging lighting conditions.

Want to see some of the different ways you can use Kodak Portra 400? We have put together some of our favourite Portra 400 shots by our customers – you can see them here.While some of the alternatives listed here aren’t directly comparable to Portra in terms of grain structure or low light capability, they’re all close enough to be useful in nearly all of the situations in which one would typically be using Portra. It’s also true that using some of these less popular films may even help your photos to stand out from the crowd!

These were sold alongside Ektacolor until 1974 when the upgraded Vericolor Professional II came along, with the codes updated to VPS and VPL. At this point, Ektacolor and the original Vericolor films were discontinued. Kodak films do tend to give your photographs a warmness, especially when compared to typical Fujicolor offerings. Portra 400 is no different in that sense, and I think it’s that warmness combined with the more muted colours that brings it so many fans. Kodak Portra works well with a wide variety of skin tones. If you’re shooting in the studio with a flash or monolight, this is perhaps the absolute best film that you can use and get your hands on. Image QualityIn most of these images you can see that there is still plenty of detail and color in the highlights, but that colors in the brightest parts of the image are certainly on the soft side which is a desired look that I’m wanting to achieve. If you want to use the film and still retain more saturation, I would recommend not adding the additional two-thirds stop as I do and then also using GND filters to control the sky. You can actually end up with quite a bit of saturation on Portra if exposed this way, but be careful as shadows can get muddy and oddly oversaturated. Kodak Portra is fairly simple to use and, in my personal opinion, is the single most forgiving negative film on the market. If you’ve got it at ISO 200 instead of 400, you’ll still be able to get a fantastic photo. For that reason, I also genuinely recommend it as a great beginner’s film once you’ve got a better understanding of exposures and how they work in a scene. Spot metering knowledge is also important here.

A lot of my recent work has been shot in these conditions. For the sake of this article I’m going to consider sunset and sunrise to be the time when direct sunlight is no longer on the foreground or subject, but the clouds in the sky are lit up with color. This light condition can happen as much as 20 minutes before sunrise or after sunset, and the further the sun is below the horizon the more even the light tends to be. The stellar dynamic range of this film makes shooting in these conditions a breeze, but if it’s possible I’m still going to use a soft GND filter to even out the exposure and retain the sunset hues that make the skies so beautiful. When it comes to exposure on Portra (and most negative film in general), once you scan the film you’ll find that your exposure choice doesn’t have so much to do with retaining detail but it does play a huge role in how much color saturation you’ll have. Overexposed negatives have softer colors and underexposed ones will have more saturation and eventually get severe color shifts in very deep shadows. Even using a one or two stop soft GND filter can help you retain some of the richer colors in the sky, but they will always be somewhat subdued on Portra. Camera films with a high exposure tend to produce images with more grains as it captures crisp and sharp details in every lighting condition. That’s why Kodak has introduced the micro-structure T-GRAIN emulsion that prevents grainy texture, especially making the film roll suitable for enlargement and scanning purposes. The Kodak professional film also features a cinematic VISION film technology that provides a fine grain structure with edge detailing and sharpness. Kodak Portra 400 is a pretty new film; especially when you consider how long Kodak as a brand has been around. It was born in 1998 and changed to what it is today in 2010. The same streamlining happened with the ISO 160 Portra a year later, while the ISO 800 Portra was only ever available in a single version anyway. Have you just got hold of a film camera and are not sure where to start. We have lots of films to choose from, but you might be wondering which is the best one for you? Then read our guide Choose Your Film. It will give you a good starting point and a clear idea of what the different films do.

Kodak Portra 400 Professional Film 35 mm Pack of 5 Key Features:

Best-in-class underexposure latitude?no other colour film gives you so much latitude (-2 to +3 stops) so you can shoot with confidence even under challenging lighting conditions. Aside from the T-grain one, I have no idea what those things are and will definitely forget them once I’ve finished writing this. That’s fine, though. As any good salesperson knows, it’s not the features that make people buy. It’s the benefits. Useful article: What I Learned Processing 164 Rolls of Film After Waiting a Year > 1. The best 35mm color film Red Cowboy, 2012. Los Angeles. Kodak Portra 400, 35mm // Leica M6, Leica 35mm f/2 Summicron