Last year, after reading Tobias Mann's review of Kodak Portra 800, I bought a roll to expose it as soon as possible. But I set aside the roll in a cool box and forgot about it until December. I had promised Bhavna a trip into Frenchtown to see how the shopkeepers and restauranteurs had decorated the downtown area. The sky was overcast, creating an excellent opportunity to expose a few frames of Kodak Professional Portra 800.
Kodak Professional Portra 800 is a high-speed daylight-balanced colour-negative film optimised for challenging lighting conditions. It has a nominal sensitivity of ISO 800 and a notable underexposure latitude for effectively pushing to ISO 1600 with maintained quality and extended highlight and shadow detail. As we walked around Frenchtown, I exposed the roll at boxpseed in a wide variety of natural lighting conditions, including broad daylight, open shade, and of course, window light. Although I have several Minolta flash units, I did not expose any frames under artificial light.
The film was developed at Boutique Film Lab and scanned using my Silver Fast 9 and Epson Perfection V600. I used Negative Lab Pro to convert the scans. No corrections to exposure, colour temperature and composition were made.
Kodak Professional Portra 800 35mm film delivers all the advantages of a high-speed film, finer grain, higher sharpness, and more natural skin tones and colour reproduction. Portra 800 film - for perfectly stunning results with less-than-perfect light. The negatives have some warm tones, and while the grain is noticeable, I think it’s still very pleasant looking.
| Name | Kodak Portra 800 |
|---|---|
| Type | Colour (negative) |
| Native ISO | 800 |
| Format | 35mm |
| Process | C-41 |
| Features | Kodak T-GRAIN emulsions, Fine Grain, High Sharpness & Edge Detail |
| Lab | Boutique Film Labs |
| Scanner | Epson Perfection V600 |
| Software | SilverFast 9 SE + Negative Lab Pro |
