Film Friday - December 22nd, 2023. Kodak Portra 800

If you were to ask us what the perfect color film is, we’d tell you it is Kodak Portra. Exactly which speed of Portra matters only a little as the whole family of films is pretty amazing. Because of its incredible qualities, the Kodak Portra films have earned a popular reputation over the years and are widely used by film photographers doing everything from weddings, to lifestyle shoots, to landscapes and more than we can think of to list. Sitting at the high speed end of the Portra family, Kodak Portra 800 has established itself as the most versatile of bunch, even if it is a bit grainier.

Kodak Portra 800 came into the world in 1998 along with Portra 400 and Portra 160. The three films took over for Kodak’s previous professional color film: Vericolor. Early on Portra 400 and 160 were divided into the NC (natural/neutral color) and VC (vivid color) branches while Portra 800 was just Portra 800. Eventually the Portra line was consolidated in 2010-2011 with the NC and VC versions being combined into single emulsions that split the difference. The new Portra 400 and 160 were less saturated than VC but more so than NC. They were also less contrasty than VC but more so than NC, meanwhile Portra 800 just kept being Portra 800. But while it may not seem like much has changed over the years with Portra 800, it has steadily undergone revisions and improvements just like its slower siblings. There have been refinements to its grain and sharpness, along with how it responds to scanning. Additionally, Portra 800 has been tweaked to remain consistent with Portra 400 and 160 since Kodak’s goal all along is to make the films interchangeable in terms of their appearance as well as how digital printers and scanners reproduce them. This here, is one of the first big selling points of Portra 800. You can shoot a roll of it next to a roll of Portra 400. Or you can shoot a roll of Portra 800 in 35 and then in 120. Either way, you can count on the results to enjoy a high level of consistency with one another.

There isn’t anything Kodak Portra 800 cannot do. Shoot it indoors, lowlight, and under artificial, mixed lights at that and the results will still be stunning with surprisingly good skin tones and color reproduction. Image by Peter Carlson and made with his Hasselblad 500C/M.

Let’s really get into the meat of the argument for why Portra 800 is a great go-to film. It all revolves around how it handles color. The Portra films in general are optimized to see color in a similar fashion as the human eye. That means Portra 800 will show you the colors that you see. Additionally it is particularly well-suited for recreating nice skin tones, hence the “Portra” name and why this film is THE film for pretty much every analog wedding photographer out there. But it doesn’t just have to be about weddings and portraiture. Kodak Portra 800 can be a great cityscape film, a great landscape film, a great still life film, a great macro film. You name it, if it involves color, this film can do it. Let’s have a look at some Portra 800 colors.

We are not entirely sure just why we loaded our pinhole camera up with Portra 800 on this spring day in Edinburgh, but we made the most of it and the results turned out great. Image made with a Zero Image 2000.

Despite the drab conditions, the red of Bret’s coat pops quite nicely in this self-portrait he made with his Nikon N90. While it is easy to think of Portra 800 simply as a nighttime film, it gets a lot done during the day as well.

Maybe you start outdoors but you never know when your adventures will take you indoors… and into less light. That is where having a roll of Portra 800 in the camera can really help. Image made with a Pentax K1000 and cropped to remove a bit of overlapping frame.

Moving on from color, we suppose we should quickly touch upon Portra 800’s grain. Yes, the film will be grainier than Portra 400, just like that film is grainier than Portra 160. It is one of the immutable laws of film photography: the faster your film gets the grainier it becomes. Having said that, Portra 800 is also not as grainy as you might expect. Two of the three previous images were made with 35mm Portra 800, and one of those is even cropped a bit. Take a close look at them and while you can notice the grain, it also isn’t all that overpowering either. Of course, this will become more of an issue if enlarging is your goal, or if you mis-expose the film drastically, but all things being equal we think Portra 800 performs admirably in the grain department.

The other side of that coin is all the benefits that extra film speed brings you. You can be wandering the city streets one moment and duck into an open sewer or down into a subway station and suddenly that roll of fine grained ISO 100 film is going to be a bit tricky to use. Not so with Portra 800. It will go anywhere and make getting reasonably good exposures much simpler. If you plan on using a slower lens, such as many zoom lenses or really long telephoto lenses, the extra speed that Portra 800 brings can mean the difference between a sharp image and a shaky image. Keep this in mind specifically if you pick up a nifty mirror lens to play with. Portra 800 is also a great film for many toy cameras such as the Holga, Diana, or the Lomography Fisheye camera. These cameras are known for underexposing easily and always needing a ton of light. You can help increase the odds of success by feeding them something a bit faster. Finally, while it might seem counter-intuitive, we have loaded our pinhole cameras on occasion with Portra 800, either to shorten daytime exposures enough to make hand-holding somewhat feasible (still going to be blurry but at least recognizably blurry) or to make nighttime exposures possible at all (a pinhole camera loaded with ISO 100 film can easily need 2-8 hours at night, ISO 800 can cut this down to exposures of as little as 30 minutes). When thinking about Portra 800 it is wise to keep the versatility that its speed brings in mind.

You can make photography at the ends of the day a bit easier with Portra 800. Image made with a Pentax K1000.

There isn’t much to say about Portra 800’s contrast and this is because like the other Portra films, it’s contrast level is pretty normal. It is supposed to be. Kodak Portra is meant to have a softer amount of contrast so that it can handle a wider array of situations. Increased contrast brings with it increased saturation and Portra is trying to avoid too much color saturation. While its contrast might be more normal, its latitude is exceptional. Kodak Portra 800 will record a pretty amazing range of detail from shadow to highlights. In fact, Kodak boasts in Portra 800’s data sheet that it is the best in class when it comes to underexposure latitude. We feel like we are just piling on at this point in terms of Portra 800’s benefits.

One thing Portra 800 is not great at is reciprocity failure. Ironically, even though as a faster film it is better suited for low light situations, it is not well-suited for doing long exposures in those situations. Even Kodak’s own data sheets give very little information, stating only that exposures longer than 1 second are not recommended and further testing should be done on your own. We would recommend adding about 1 stop of exposure by the time you are up to 10 seconds. Then again, Portra 800 is claimed to have up to 2 stops of underexposure latitude, so maybe it is not that big a deal after all.

Portra 800’s higher speed will definitely come in handy if you are doing crazy stuff like coupling lenses on your Pentax 67 for hand-held, extremely close macro work. This was also an unintentionally underexposed image by about 1-1.5 stops.

We are fond of describing the Kodak Portra films as near perfect as color films get. Portra 800 specifically is no exception to this. It has great color rendition, it has a speed that makes it suitable for most situations, it has fine grain for its relative speed, it is sharp and crisp, it has great latitude, it scans and prints well, it is consistent. It can do whatever you want it to do. It is one of those films that we will miss if Kodak ever discontinues it. So why wait for that to happen? Go use it now and enjoy it!

This link will make buying a roll or two directly from us a snap.

Meanwhile, a few more sample images for you.

Exploring the dim interior of a local Victorian-style mansion. Image made with a Fuji GS645.

Kodak Portra 800 doing what Portra does with color. Image made with a Pentax K1000.

More in-home, late-evening portraiture by staff member Peter Carlson. Image made with a Hasselblad 500C/M.

Image made with a Pentax K1000.

We only had to push the shopping cart around the store for about five minutes thanks to the extra speed from Portra 800. Image made with a Zero Image 2000 pinhole camera.