A quick update on my journey of discovery with Kodak Portra.

So, as the name should make it rather clear, Kodak's Portra is a film aimed at portraiture, pleasing skin tones and not landscape photography. In landscape photography more saturated colours are very often wanted or required to make the most of the scenery. Ladies do not really enjoy orange skin tones as it happens when colours are saturated...or so I am told.

The image above, shot with Portra 160, is exactly as the scanned negative came off the scanner.

Kodak's Portra is available in a 160, 400 and 800 ISO speeds. The 400 variant seems to be more popular with landscape photographers as it is slightly more saturated than 160.

In the next week or two I plan to shoot these two films to see how they compare.

Now, as this very standard cellphone pic below shows for reference, the Portra 160 colours are not all that saturated at all.

Now I have been developing black & white film for a while. Colour not so much but I seem to get it right consistently. Temperature management is, of course, crucial.

So as I scanned the latest developed roll this morning I found something rather interesting. While I have now come to expect this distinct colour rendition I thought was normal I found some considerable variance.

One random image scanned very differently. One is rather not so nice and does not play along in Photoshop. The other odd one is quite pleasing and more accurate. It still has that distinct muted colour tone but it plays along well in Photoshop.

Every film has a signature characteristic or two. Right now I am not sure if I am getting to know Kodak Portra 160 or a dying scanner.

The two images are side by side on the same strip of negative. The difference could not have been caused by wonky development or even variances in exposure. The only logical explanation I can think of is that the scanner is having a bad day or it is not well at all.

Sure, I can and probably will rescan them but I simply did not have the time today. And so I am still not perfectly sure if Kodak Portra 160 is a film I would want to shoot in the long run. I do have some homework to do before I write it off though.

Oh well, all of that is part of the fun on this journey of discovery.

I will be back soon to report on the progress.

Happy shooting and remember, the day we stop learning is a terrible day...and remember to have fun doing it!

Anton