What a technological achievement, this film! Kudos to the teams who developed and improved on Vericolor, then Portra VC/NC, to today's emulsion. I've never shot the current 400 formulation though, I do mostly B&W, and never felt the need to shelf out for a top color product. I've used some old Porty 160NC which incredibly still shoots well at 160.
Thanks for another great video David! always love hearing your opinions on different film stocks. I never actually used Portra 400 before. I bought a 5 pack once and just sold it immediately. I personally don't like the low contrast look and the warmth of the film. Portra 160 is one of my favorite stocks and performs, to my eye, much better than Portra 400. Finer grain and higher sharpness are things I really cherish in my photos. Additionally, 400 iso seems a bit overkill for me. I shoot nighttime city shots on 100 iso films handheld and don't feel the need for a higher iso alternative. If I have to shoot in total darkness I go for Portra 800 which I adore. been messing with a lot of lab scans lately, so I completely get your frustration with how much "interpretation" can wiggle in during the scanning process. That's why I moved mostly to slide film which makes scanning a lot easier and saves me from dealing with Theseus's Paradox. After setting uo a darkroom and learning how to print, I'll shoot color negative more often.
Many labs make scans when they get a roll of Porta 400, what the 20-yeae-olds call "the Portra look". It looks like seriously underexposed prints would, from a seriously overexposed negative (when printing manually in a darkroom). You know, the pastel shades. These are not produced by the film, but is made by the lab, because this is popular with the crowds. Your lab scans look like that, whilen your own scans do not,, but are closer to that the film looks when exposed correctly and printed with a correct exposure and colo correction to a good quality paper in a darkroom.
Thank you! It had not occurred to me that labs were scanning this in a certain way for a certain look. I did notice that my, especially 4X5 home scans, looked much more like I would want film images to look.
@@DavidHancock these low contrast scans gives space for post-processing. If you want, you can increase contest and saturate colors. If the shadows are too dark, you can't save them. They are lost. If the contrast is lower and the deeps are scanned low contrast, you can improve shadow details and darken highlights. If I can on my Epson scanner I scan with flat curve, 16/bit per channel and give the histogram space. So you have the possibility to optimize the contrast like you want.
My favorite is Ektar. I love punchy film. But I don't use film for this subject or that subject. I use many types of film for many of the same subjects. Whatever film I have in the camera I use it. I schott portra 160 at an autograph convention with a flash indoors.
The portra 400 is not made in nc and vc from 2010 i read on wikipedia so how is this new portra compared whith the nc from before 2010? If i takethem to the lab😊
"Always test your shots" man I hate that. How about you always test your PRODUCTS, Kodak? Unrelated... Neutral Density filters: "Are we a joke to you, David?" (re: 1/45th of second leaf lenses) Anyway, in general, Portra does indeed tick all the boxes... except one big one called "price". To my eye (not having done rigorous testing), Vision3 motion picture film is almost the same exact film. They probably share like 95% of their formulation and technology together, and almost all of this review would probably apply to it as well, aside from lack of sheet film. But in bulk and if you are okay with dealing with remjet, vision3 can be had for roughly a FOURTH of the price of Portra.
How do labs scans of 4x5 represent anything? Workflows and equipment will vary much more from lab to lab than 120 and 35mm which are basically using the same two scanners for most things nowadays.
Portra 400 isn’t a terribly sharp film. It’s certainly not sharper than Portra 800 or Ultramax. It is very fine grain but has lower acuteness than other stock. Probably to not render skin blemishes too starkly. While being finer grain than Fuji Superia 400, Superia 400 was visibly sharper than Portra 400.
Well, that's why I refer to the Kodak PGI ratings on their films to evaluate how sharp their films are. Kodak tests film sharpness using an MTF chart, but their PGI ratings are something that I find to be more digestible for a larger audience. To that end, Portra 400 does rank higher than either UltraMax or Portra 800. It is definitely soft compared to most black and white films, however, and if every unique stock on the market today were compared equally in this regard, I would not expect Portra 400 to be in the top half. But taking available Kodak PGI data on their stocks, it's a good performer in that regard.
