Kodak Portra 160 Review, Samples, Tips, Technical Analysis, and Guide | All About Film

Hope your cold gets better soon.

Yeah, Portra 160 is magical. But why diss Ultramax? It’s awesome!

The 4x6 and 8x12 prints from 35mm were sooo good, really gave digital a run for its money. A very fine pleasing grain, great skin tone.

I personally haven't had great experience with Portra 160. It's not as fine grained as Extra 100, not as great latitude and not as fast as Portra 400. Maybe the photos looks more flat too. I find usually Portra 400 at iso 100, in medium format gives the fine grained results and saturation that I prefer.

I happens to use the A7R4 for scanning too. For negative it's best to use the 4 shot pixel shift mode. You will also need good light source and a good color profile calibrated for your setup.

Thoughts on -- Canon R9 - RETRO OF THE F-1 with the Olympic Paris symbol and the winder grip -- that would be awesome!!!

Awesome video, David! I would really like to try 160. If you haven't tried it already, I highly recommend Vision3 250D! It has great color accuracy as well. Talking about doing your own scanning, I only had one roll of film done at a lab when I start film photography last fall. I realized the immense cost of lab work so I immediately decided to invest in my own gear for rolling my own film from bulk, developing, and scanning all my own film. It takes so much work to get good results from the scanner, especially for color. But when I get it right, it's very rewarding.

I don't think about it. Whatever fiilm i have I use for whatever.I have a fridge full of Expired film. Love Ektar. It is my favorite film even when it turns Blue in shade. I have a fridge full of Expired film.The reason I shoot film. To quote Bob Ross. There are no mistakes just happy accidents.

I would agree with you that of the Porta 'family' the Porta 160 is, in my opinion, and along with Ektar 100 the best colour films currently available (I loved Kodachrome 25/II). The problem for me is the cost; as digital film emulations improve, I am hard put to tell the difference between the digital and the 'real' thing. I am a heretic, I know, but the cost and the fact that printing of the film is usually a hybrid system, either as scanned image to be manipulated in a photo-editing package or in the actual printing, if taken to a photolab, is there an appreciable difference?

I never liked Porta for anything but portraits. During the daylight landscapes are so muted / washed out that I would argue it is better to shoot a digital camera instead. I know people shoot it 2 stops overexposed to get better results but at that shutter speeds Velvia 50 is clear winner in terms of colors.

I disagree that 160 is the strongest. I’ve rigorously tested all the Portras and it’s certainly the most tricky. The grain isn’t so significantly finer grain than Portra 400 to justify its trade offs for me. Especially the highlight retentions isn’t on the same level as 400 and 800. I’ve had sunlit faces burn out at box speed exposure for the shadow side which never happened to me with 400 and 800. This all pertains to Frontier scans, so it’s not the scanner. It’s sure nice that it has a different color reproduction than the other but I do prefer the others for most cases. It certainly underexposes really well and unsurprisingly handles tungsten light the best. But as you said you need to learn this film to use it well. Portra 400 and 800 are more flexible, give more pleasing skin tones.

On a different topic. I recommend you look at the curves for Kodak Vision3 5207 and 5219 for you Portra 400 video. You’ll find that Portra 400 seems to have been built on the look of these two Vision3 films.

Lastly since Portra 800 can be shot at 1600 without push processing, I don’t think we need a 1600 offering. What I miss most is a high speed, fine grained tungsten stock. Something like Kodak 5219. A 500T variant of Portra that I can shoot in all lighting conditions and obtain accurate colors.

Have a look at Negmaster BR. I find it superior to NLP, for Portra in particular, and it avoids the Adobe "tax". I find it odd you would opt for Sony rather than K1 pixel shift - any particular reason? You should review the Valoi Easy35 holder for 35mm - absolutely fantastic device. Look at Luminar Dust AI too - in my testing it doesn't touch the grain - may save you some time😊

This playlist is a great resource for comparing film For the scans, in general I prefered the lab scans, with a handful of camera-scanned images.