Portra 400 is Kodak’s most recent films, a direct response to the revival in film photography, it has been built with scanning in mind it is the most modern of films. The Portra range of film was initially developed to better capture skin tones as the name suggests it was aimed at portrait and wedding photography; however, it has been since used for nature and travel photography.

Portra is a highly versatile film that allows for guesstimated meter readings, showing great flexibility in over and underexposing the film, with areas only being blown out or detail lost in shadows under largely incorrect exposures. This large latitude in exposure allows for more fun making returning back to those old, unmetered cameras easy and enjoyable. Just head out with a few exposures metered in your head and you should get back some fantastic images, especially if you are prepared to fiddle a little in Photoshop.

It has been praised for its excellent colours; Portra 400 is in that sweet medium between muted pastels and punchy bold colours. It has been designed for skin tones, able to capture a lot of detail in colour within that palette. Able to capture some colour from very pale skin tones this film works well with Caucasian skin tones in a range of lighting conditions.

The speed is fast enough to fulfil the majority of its uses, despite this, I found that depth of field had to be sacrificed in some shots to maintain the ability to shot by hand. Images have a softer quality to them which is synonymous with some film photography and is especially beneficial with a human subject matter. The resulting photographs are of course very connected to the glass used. For example, these shots are taken with my old Pentax Spotmatic SP500 and the difference is notable based on which lens was used. This is a nice film that should be a staple for anyone shooting colour in film, or those that are interested in dusting off their old 35mm cameras. Despite the versatility and benefits of using this film in the modern age, it has become quite expensive with a 5 pack of the 35mm film going for around £30/40 on the internet with development costs on top of that.

Kodak states that Portra 400 has the finest grain for an ISO 400 film, the film does indeed live up to this claim with very fine grain, but I have little to compare with. However this grain may cause colour casts on the image if you are doing your own scanning (as I was) where with more exposed areas having less detail, but a finer grain, and more of a yellow cast, and less exposure created bigger grain, but a sharper image, however, this resulted in a bluer cast. The colour casting created in home scanning can easily be rectified within Lightroom or Photoshop.

Kodak has a range of films within the Portra range with differing ISOs such as 800 and 160, with all these being available in 35mm, 120mm (medium format), 220mm and 4×5” allowing for everyone to use and enjoy this fun little film that offers great colouration whilst being very versatile and forgiving of exposure mistakes. I personally had a lot of fun shooting with Portra 400, this may have been the film or the joy of getting to know my old camera again.