I Still Shoot Film

Kodak recently contacted me about testing the new Portra 160 film which was released last month (yes, new types of film are still being manufactured); and because I never say, “No” to free film, I happily accepted. For those of you who are not up-to-date with the Kodak Portra line, Portra 160 will be replacing both Kodak Portra 160NC and Kodak Portra 160VC. I received 5 sample rolls (120) and decided to test it out several different ways.

For the first test, I figured it might be a good idea to try Portra 160 for what it was intended - portraits and natural skin tone. I opted to shoot a roll during my test shoot with the lovely Tamara P. from Trend’s By Metropolitan. This was shot with a Kiev 88 and developed normally, with a combination of natural and artificial light:

First off, one of the claims of the new Kodak Portra 160 is that it has super-fine grain for  scanning. I must confirm that this statement is 100% true and I am scanning with a semi-obsolete CanoScan 8600F so I can only surmise that professional drum scans would give you insanely fine grain. Let’s take a look at a 100% view of a section from the image:

I think we can all agree that this is some seriously fine grain.

Second, let’s talk about skin tones. I have never been big on natural skin tones (I loves me some serious contrast and poppy color) but there have been plenty of times where it has been imperative and essential that I achieve them for a specific client or project. Once again, Kodak Portra 160 delivers on its promise, giving incredibly natural skin tones. In fact, I can honestly say that the color and tone look exactly how they did when I was actually shooting. Now, it is important to keep in mind that your scanner settings will affect your color balance, so if you try the Portra 160 and feel the tone is off, check your scanner.

Here is another more super-soft shot of Tamara:

Up next: How Portra 160 performs in a plastic camera…

Kodak Portra 160 Product Information Page

(Source: istillshootfilm.org)